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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY ; 



OR, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MENTAL HEALING. 



BY 



WILLIAM I. aiLL, A. M. 



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BOSTON : 

H. H. CARTER & KARRICK, PUBLISHERS, 
3 Beacon Street. 

1887. 

CX3 



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Copyright, i88 7> by C. A. GILL. 



C. M. A. Twitchell, Printer, 319 Washington Street, Boston. 



PREFACE 



The earnest advocacy and the practical exemplification 
of the power of mental healing, and their rapid diffusion, 
rank among the most striking phenomena of our times. 
Immense is the good, both physical and metaphysical 
which has thus been accomplished. Great, too, is the 
intellectual impulse which has hence been imparted to 
thousands of minds who have been led by this move- 
ment to grapple vigorously with the most subtle and pro- 
found of metaphysical problems, in their hopeful effort 
to understand the philosophy of mental healing. 

That these efforts have, in some cases, been rather 
crude, is only what were to be expected. All the earlier 
and initial efforts of thought in any direction, have been 
crude compared with the matured results of later times. 
The geocentric theory of astronomy preceded the Coper- 
nician. The phenomena of Paleontology had numerous 
ludicrous explanations before the modern doctrine of 
geology was born and reared. All the sciences have 
exemplified the same psychological law. Psychology 
and metaphysics have been no exception. Considered 
in this light, even the crudest of the writing on this sub- 
ject which in recent years have so rapidly issued from 
the press, deserve respectful consideration. Partially 



IV PREFACE. 

under this cover the author may hope for some indul- 
gence for the imperfections of the following exposition 
of Pneumatopathy. It ought to be some improvement 
on its predecessors in the same line ; and this, as it is 
hoped, may be found to be true. This only can justify 
its publication, and certainly nothing less will commend 
it to the public and secure readers. 

Some writers will doubtless think that certain falla- 
cious notions might have been better passed over in 
silence. But those which have been noticed are 
wide-spread, and by many people they are deemed of 
supreme importance and infallibly true ; and, as thence 
armed with divine authority to denounce whatever does 
not bow to them. They are eminently and painfully 
obstructive, and they divide into hostile camps, parties 
which ought to be only friendly rivals and fraternal co- 
operatives in a great common cause. These fallacies, 
too, are especially repulsive to the understanding of in- 
telligent lookers on ; and they thus operate widely and 
powerfully as an injurious prejudice against our whole 
cause. 

Besides, it helps to a more definite conception and 
understanding of a truth to view its proofs negatively as 
well as positively, by seeing the refutation of its oppo- 
sites. It thus becomes more clearly marked off from 
rival error, and shines both by direct radiation and 
reflected light. 

Some there are who would rather have us wrap up the 
errors exposed, for fear the exposure will hurt the cause. 
But truth cannot be harmed by truth, and a studied con- 
cealment is calculated to excite distrust, and indicates 
insincerity or a lack of a genuine conviction of the verity 



PREFACE. V 

of the principles avowed. In the personal ministration 
and the practical application of truth there is a sphere 
for the exercise of prudence. But in philosophy there 
is no such call for delicacy. We want the truth, pure 
and simple, sharply discriminated from error. Here it is 
supposed there are no personal or party interests to be 
conserved or promoted, and that the one only interest to 
be considered is the removal of error and the advance- 
ment of the truth. 

It is a ground of frequent regret that the friends of 
mental healing are divided into numerous opposing 
schools. The regret is natural, but equally natural is 
the occasion of it. Such schools are inevitable till dog- 
matism and mere theoretic speculation give place to the 
method of science; and, in the meanwhile, these schools 
are doing their best to show up a portion of supposed 
truth. They are educating each other and the world. 
This will continue till each discerns its own errors, and 
appreciates what is true in the theory of its opponents, 
so that they can come together and "have all things 
common." 

One of the defects of much of our Pneumatopathic 
literature is its want of a critical spirit and faculty. 
Two or three of our earlier writers are well read and 
have a fund of ideas. But they lack discrimination, and 
betray too little of the discipline which should mark the 
qualified expositor of philosophy. They are apt to 
quote passages from various writers without compre- 
hending them, and use them without due discrimination. 
They make other men's books obscure their own. One 
or two cases of this kind the author has thought fit to 
notice, by way of example and suggested caution. While 



VI PREFACE. 

we ought to be acquainted with the world's thought, we 
ought to know its value and significance before we 
attempt to use it, and so use it with critical intelligence. 

One of the most important desiderata in our moral 
and intellectual life is a strong conviction without dog- 
matism. Without strong conviction there is no moral 
power, and nowhere, is there more need than in the 
vocation of mental healing. There is good and rational 
ground for such conviction, and there is really no want 
of conviction among us on this great subject. The 
danger and fault here is that this conviction may extend 
to incidental notions and degenerate into dogmatism. 
It is also a danger into which some among us have fallen 
very deeply, and they should serve as a warning to 
others. While strong in his own convictions, the author 
propounds no dogmas for others to adopt. 

Minds which are chiefly woven of the strands of cus- 
tom, and especially if all their interests are of the same 
fabric, are disposed to describe mental healers in con- 
temptuous epithets, as quacks and charlatans. We 
excuse some of them on the score of their strong prov- 
ocation, which is of the same kind as that of the ex- 
cited and turbulent shrine-maker of Ephesus. But still 
we are tempted to retort by throwing a stone into their 
fragile house of crystal. Nothing on earth that has 
stood through ages has ever been marked by various 
forms of false pretense so much as the brotherhood of 
these administrators of physicial poisons for medicine. 
Even a degenerate priesthood has scarcely surpassed 
them here, for these from the nature of the case could 
impose on themselves more readily than the physical 
doctors. The patron saint of these doctors among the 



PREFACE. Vll 

Greeks, who were the national genius of the world, was 
Hippocrates. His name is still held in memory and ex- 
alted honor for his supposed extraordinary medical wis- 
dom. We have some records which show the quality of 
that wisdom. It is said, for instance, that he claimed to 
cure grave maladies by such things as the pulverised eye 
of an insect, the tooth of a fox, the horn of a goat, the 
heart of a mouse, the blood of a white pup, the bile of 
a turbulent heifer. Not a partical better than these are 
the most honored medicines of modern times, of which 
abundant proof can easily be furnished. Within a cen- 
tuary they have become systematically worse, because 
uniformly poisonous, with their deadly qualities 
concealed under the terms of a dead language. For 
" the healing art " and for many physicians we have the 
highest respect ; but we claim a right to attempt to im- 
prove on their method ; and this is the head and front of 
our offending as Pneumatopathists. 

The author here offers to the world a little of what he 
thinks it needs and will accept. But it is of no value as 
a dogma, but only as a stimulant to the intellectual and 
spiritual life of some to whom it may be adapted ; and 
from various quarters the author has been glad to derive 
the instruction and development which have prompted 
him to undertake the work here offered to the public ; 
and especially, and with distinguished consideration, it 
is hereby dedicated to the service of his fellow-workers 
and investigators in this noble field of metaphysical toil. 



CONTENTS. 

PART FIRST. 
Pneumatopathy in Relation to Historic Evolution. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Rise of Pneumatopathy into Acknowledged Importance, . I 

CHAPTER II. 

Different Phases of the Subject, ...... 17 

PART SECOND. 
Pneumatopathy in Relation to God and Creation. 

CHAPTER III. 
Existence and Nature of God, 24 

CHAPTER IV. 
Man as God's Idea and Creature, ...... 29 

PART THIRD. 

Pneumatopathy in Relation to Law. 

CHAPTER V. 
Nature and Origin of Law, 39 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

Laws of the Divine Activity, 48 

CHAPTER VII. 
Classes of Laws, 54 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Grades of Laws, 60 

CHAPTER IX. 
Normal Action of Law, 63 

PART FOURTH. 

Pneumatopathy in Relation to Good and Evil. 

CHAPTER X. 
Nature and Origin of Evil, . . ' * m 65 

CHAPTER XI. 
Reality of Evil and of Transcient Good, .... 70 

CHAPTER XII. 
Creation of Evil, . 84 

CHAPTER XIII. 
No Room for Evil and God, . , 89 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Fear as a Source of Evil, 92 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

PAGB 

A Priori Theology, 96 

CHAPTER XVI. 
God's Knowledge of Evil, 98 

PART FIFTH. 
Pneumatopathy in Relation to Mind and Matter. 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Materialistic Pneumatopathy, ....... 106 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Dualistic Pneumatopathy, . . . . . . .110 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Man as the Image of God, . . ... . . 121 

CHAPTER XX. 
Sense-consciousness Identifies Body with Mind, . . . 122 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Dreams as Proof that all is Mind, ..... 124 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Insanity and Mesmerism as Proof that all is Mind, . . 132 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Scientific Method of Psychology, 135 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

PAGH 

iomy of Sense, 139 



CHAPTER XXV. 
The Function of Sense, 141 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
No Mortal Mind, 148 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Reality of Sensible Phenomena and Mortal Thought, . 151 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Interpret, not Contradict, the Senses, 159 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Philosophical Realism the Logical Basis of Pneumatopathj, 165 

PART SIXTH. 

Pneumatopathy in Relation to Other Senses, 

especially psychology, physiology 

and Therapeutics. 

CHAPTER XXX. 
Spirit and Spirits, . 168 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
On Knowing the Forms of Disease, 171 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Health of Sense, Relative to the Super-sensible Life, . 173 



Xll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

PAGE 

Healing Power of the Human Mind, . . . . • . 175 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
Endowment and Science of Healing, 214 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
Modern "Witchcraft, . . . 218 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
Divine Agency in Healing, ....... 223 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
Super-sensible Maladies, 230 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
The Essential Principle of Pneumatopathy, : 233 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 
Synopsis of Pneumatopathy, . . . . . . . 238 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



PAET FIRST, 



PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO HISTORIC EVOLUTION. 



CHAPTER I. 



RISE OF PNEUMATOPATHY INTO ACKNOWLEGED 
IMPORTANCE. 

Pneumatopathy is a precise and comprehensive term 
to designate the theory and practice of mental healing. 
It may be used comprehensively to designate all such 
theories. In that significance it has a distinct and pre- 
eminent place in the circle of human thought, and is a 
much needed word. There is perhaps no other term in- 
ventable that can properly and completely fill so lofty 
and large a place. One writer has proposed phrenop- 
athy to fill this office. But that term properly denotes 
the pathology of the brain, and belongs wholly to the 
phrenologists, who have long ago appropriated the first 
part of the term, and that which is the most distinctive. 
It is plainly far too material to express the theory and 
practice of pure mental healing. 

Another writer proposes psychopathy to express all 
this. This is much better than phrenopathy. It is more 



2 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

supersensible. But it is not sufficently intellectual. 
Psyche, like our word soul, very frequently ranks men- 
tally below our word spirit and the Greek word pneuma. 
When soul and spirit, psyche and pneuma are used dis- 
tinctively, psyche and soul denote rather the emotional 
power of our supersensible nature, while mind and spirit 
and pneuma denote the superior and more intellectual 
element. Now it is this higher element which needs 
expression, as this is the agent which heals, and so the 
first part of our word falls naturally into position, while 
the second. part of the word expresses the sensitive part 
of our nature on which the active intelligence operates. 
Pneumatopathy is therefore the perfect expression of 
the great idea of mental healing, and comprehends all 
possible theories. For this end we have formed it, and 
we use it in this significance. 

Some distinctive epithet will then be necessary to 
express any one of the different theories of mental 
healing. The author prefers the epithet " Christian " 
to all others, because he believes that his theory is in 
spirit and tendency eminently Christian. He might 
have been content with the preadopted phrase " Christ- 
ian Science;" but it stands for some ideas which are 
equally unchristian and unscientific, and the adoption of 
the phrase would seem to sanction those errors. Besides, 
the term science is not distinctive. Christian theology 
is Christian science, but it is not the science we have in 
view. We therefore want a term which defines our par- 
ticular science as mental healers, and that is found in 
Pneumatopathy, and the adjective, Christian, defines it 
still further as expressive of characteristic Christian 
principle on this subject. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 3 

The subject of Pneumatopathy rises in recognized 
importance with the progress of human intelligence. 
But among some of the lower conditions of our race the 
"medicine men " have a place of power, and it is a strik- 
ing, verefiable fact that their methods are largely mental. 
They operate on the imagination and on the hope and 
fear of their patients. Their method has generally been 
curtly disposed of as an appeal to superstition ; and so 
the intrinsic mentality of the curative (and sometimes 
destructive) action has been overlooked. From the be- 
ginning the curative action has been mental, even when 
men did not understand their own mental processes. A 
scientific analysis of this was impossible before the 
dawn of modern science. 

Mind-healing of some kind has been an element more 
or less prominent in all religions. In the noblest of them 
all it is conspicuous; and in Jesus and his most eminent 
apostles it becomes the very atmosphere on which are 
fed and borne their historic name and fame. Their 
wonders in mind-healing seem to be the fragrant and 
incorruptible spices in which all their other excellencies 
are embalmed and preserved to future ages. The 
Christian Church Catholic has always claimed a special 
endowment of mind-healing virtue as her perpetual her- 
itage from the Lord, though many protestant divines, 
from sectarian impulses, have denied the claim to all but 
the Apostolic Church, or to times not much later. 
Other protestant divines of equal note have allowed that 
all churches ought in some degree to have and verify a 
power of this kind. 

In recent times, the question has been carried outside 
the pale of the Church and divested of its supernatural 



4 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

aspect. Admitting the frequent recurrence of certain 
wonderful phenomena, the new question has been raised, 
whether we cannot reduce them to the operation of 
known laws of mind or of organized matter. We shall 
then widen, they say, our knowledge and divest miracles 
of their specially marvelous element ; and by some it is 
supposed that we shall extrude God, as well as all super- 
naturalism, from the sphere of the knowable and even 
of the conceivable. 

The initial essays of what may be called the modern 
movement were very crude. Here the sense rules, and 
makes experiments and decrees for spirit. At first Mr. 
Mesmer thought the healing agent was magnetic. He, 
therefore, used magnetic iron tractors, which he traced 
over the bodies of his patients. After seeing Gasner 
achieve the same results by manipulation, he inferred 
that the healing virtue was in his body. It was thence 
denominated animal magnetism, alias mesmerism. Then 
from the labors of others it became designated as elec- 
tro-biology and vital electricity. Finally our savants, 
like Carpenter and Braid, have found it all out, and have 
resolved it into the effect of mental concentration and 
expectant attention and hypnotism. This indicates 
progress. The cause and agent are now alleged to be 
wholly mental. This moves in our line and reaches to 
our outposts. It is wrong only by incompletness. As 
hypnotism, it is a repression of thought. As expectant 
attention, it is a mental surrender to error by surrender 
to the expected. We want an explanation which is com- 
plete and wide awake, and thoroughly mental, and this 
we think is furnished in Christian Pneumatopathy, in 
brief outline. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 5 

It was in the light given to it here that I at first un- 
derstood the phrase " Christian Science." I liked the 
phrase, both from my religious feelings and scientific 
convictions. I wanted to see Christianity more scien- 
tifically and philosophically conceived and expounded ; 
and I indulged the hope that this was one of the great 
lines of its progress. But having found myself here 
mistaken, I adopted a term which is at once precise and 
comprehensive and significant — Pneumatopathy. 

Pneumatopathy cannot be the enemy of any of the 
sciences, or hostile to any honest line of intellectual 
labor and research. It can assimilate them, as it must, 
if it be true. In fact as all is mind, all of them are 
branches of Pneumatopathy. Their adherents do not 
know this, because they do not understand Pneumatop- 
athy and the fundamental verity on which it stands, 
that all is mind. From this principle it follows that all 
sensible phenomena are only a lower department of men- 
tal phenomena. Hence, on the other hand, anatomy, 
surgery and physiology are no enemies to Pneumatop- 
athy, but aids, and subordinate forms in which it works. 
The same holds true of all the other physicial sciences, 
so far as their procedure is just and truly scientific. 
Pneumatopathy is the focal center of them all, and 
claims the service and allegience of all ; just as the head 
claims the service and allegience of all the members of 
the body. We therefore bespeak the attention and good 
will and co-operation of all parties ; and we are sure they 
will not disappoint us, though they may not accord with 
us in all our claims and doctrines. 

Pneumatopathy is therefore not necessarily opposed 
either to clairvoyance or mesmerism or spiritualism, or 



6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

any other class of manifestations which legitimately 
tend toward a fuller knowledge and development of the 
mental powers of man. Pneumatopathy is not an icon- 
oclast, but an architect, and is glad to employ all the 
arts and sciences as her builders, excavators, masons, 
sculptors, and decorators ; and she alone is judge of 
their relative duties and positions, and she draws the 
plan and makes the assignment of places for all. 

A new intellectual era is dawning. A new signifi- 
cance is going to be attached to all human things, 
whence new forces in all directions will be evolved All 
things are changing, and that in the line of progress; 
and progress is always in the line of augmented mental- 
ity and spirituality. All the forms of disease are chang- 
ing, and also the method of treating them. They are 
becoming evermore closely allied with the nervous sys- 
tem and the brain, and so with the mind ; and their 
treatment must therefore have a growing quality 
of mentality. The regular physicians are learning to 
rely less on physicial medicine and more on mental con- 
ditions. Therefore, to make this subject a topic of 
special and chief study must be wise, and in accordance 
with the march of the human mind. 

The lower and sensible forms of action and influence 
are not to be neglected and despised. Nothing what- 
ever should be so treated. All things, all phenomena? 
have a place and an effective relation to everything else, 
and true science consists in observing these relations. 
Nothing is more fully agreed on in modern times than 
that all things constitute a unity of forces and convic- 
tions. Free-thinker and orthodox unite in this. There- 
fore the sensible and the supersensible have a living 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 7 

relation to each other. That does not mean that the 
relation is all on one side, that there is anywhere an 
action without an equal reaction. It therefore does not 
mean that while mind acts on body, body does not act 
on mind ; on the other hand, that body acts on mind 
without any reaction from mind. Therefore both are 
to be the subject of careful study and investigation, and 
both to be used according to their normal and vital 
relations. 

But as the supersensible is the superior, and the evi- 
dent end of the sensible, this should receive the greater 
attention, should be treated with the greater respect, 
and in its light all else should be contemplated. The 
supersensible mind should rule, and all lower forces 
should be treated as subordinate, and as of value only 
in relation to this. Thus mind should be made practi- 
cally and theoretically the end of all and the king of all. 
In medicine, or the healing art, therefore, Pneumatop- 
athy is the pathy which covers and includes all others 
that are legitimate, and puts them all in their proper 
relations and positions relative to each other, and to the 
whole, the pneuma or spirit. 

Hence the sober, scientific precision of our method- 
It is, like all true science and philosophy, limitless in its 
breadth. It has no artificial boundaries and exclusive- 
ness. Nor is it a blind, empirical eclecticism. It is 
broad by principle, and what it excludes or includes is 
so treated by law. It is forever the focal point of all 
thought and action ; and except as we are working in a 
line toward that focus we are not working philosophic- 
ally. Here we rest our case ; and on this issue we 
appeal to the expanding thought of the world, confident 



8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

of a coming great success, and for which we both labor 
and wait. 

Pneumatopathy involves an entire system of meta- 
physics, religion and theology. Without all this, one 
may have considerable gifts of mental healing, just as 
one may be a good man without being a profuncl student 
in the science of religion and morals. Yet knowledge 
is always power ; and men of intelligence will always 
try to understand their own mental processes and the 
laws of the universe, sensible and supersensible. The 
more thorough is their knowledge and the more full and 
clear their comprehension of the philosophy of this 
subject, the more firm and unwavering will be their 
mental action in the process of mental healing. The 
theory, well understood, is thus a living power in its 
practical application. 

This book is but an epitome of the thoughts and facts, 
and valuable truths, which belong to the subject on 
which it treats. It is presented as a guard against 
some very foolish and wild notions, which have gained 
currency under the name of Christian Science, and as a 
broader and more philosophical exposition of the found- 
ations and laws of mental healing, or the broader subject 
of Pneumatopathy. 

Some writers on the subject of mental healing, have 
done well. Respectable in learning, and patient in the 
accumulation of a certain class of data, they have pre- 
sented a strong array of evidence of the power of mind 
over the body; they have also done something, one of 
them in particular, Rev. W. F. Evans, in expounding 
the philosophy of the subject ; but they are exces- 
sively one sided at the best. They have never recog- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 9 

nized the converse fact, that the body has a power, 
large and various, over the supersensible faculties; and 
therefore they cannot do anything by way of a scientific 
exposition of the relations of the two classes of phe- 
nomena. Further, they do not take into consideration, 
what should be obvious to all who affirm that mind is 
the only reality and substance, that the body is mind, a 
congeries of modes of mind, the lower forms, in which 
the mind is self-manifested, and that the same is true of 
all of the phenomena of the external world, and all 
organisms, external to our own. This oversight creates 
another hiatus in our work, and reveals a task of the 
first importance, which has not been conceived, much 
less performed, namely, an exposition of the subject 
which reduces all phenomena to one all-embracing mental 
unity, and furnishes the laws by which in unity all are 
governed ; a Pneumatopathy which covers all the know- 
able, whether it be called matter or spirit, body or mind, 
and which also therefore utilizes all phenomena in their 
proper relations to others, thus disclosing a panopathy 
as the expression of Pneumatopathy. 

The author, from his pre-college days, has been occu- 
pied to a large extent in studies which are vitally allied 
with the present theme, and in those earlier days he 
became a firm believer in egoistic idealism, or the doc- 
trine that all is mind, that whatever is immediately 
known is the ego, and its concious modes. This he has 
studied and expounded from a purely philosophical 
aspect during many years in the past ; and it is only in 
recent years that he has been led to connect it directly 
with the healing agency, while he has always seen that it 
removed all the scientific difficulties pertaining to the 



IO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

conception of miracles, and that it brings them more 
directly within the range of an extensive attainability 
among men ; yet he treated it irrespective of its direct 
practical bearing upon the profession of mental healing, 
while conscious of its application thereto. Of late 
years he has made it a special study in this line and 
direction, and has devoted to this study most of his 
time. This book is set forth in the hope that it will 
serve as an initial guide to inquirers on this subject, 
and also as a text-book in classes studying it under the 
direction of a competent teacher. The author is far 
from wishing to imitate those who oppose all reading 
except one book. " Prove all things." Read all, and 
sift the chaff from the wheat. All have some good in 
them, some more than others, and so far all have much 
room for improvement, which is sure to come from 
trained minds who study the subject for the love of it 
and for the advancement of truth. 

The author has not gone into detail in proving the 
fact or the power of mental healing. It is assumed that 
that has been already well and variously performed. 
Examples are innumerable, and generally familiar ; the 
only question that remains concerns the law which the 
facts exemplify. This law, or set of laws, which consti- 
tute the science of the subject, is the great quest. 

A book on philosophy should not be a mere advertise- 
ment, and therefore little is herein said of the author. 
He is lost in the great principles unfolded. The Truth 
is everything. Its power is great, and often wonderful. 
We have been again and again surprised in the course of 
our practice and observation to see its operation, to see 
how mental action in the Truth and the Spirit has been 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. II 

a power both great and rapid in its effect. This is as 
it should be, because mind is all, and its supersensible 
action is of a higher rank than sensible action. 

Let us now consider some of the causes of the sudden 
rise of Pneumatopathy into power and influence, as indi- 
cative of its future influence and triumphant reign. 

The sudden rise of this subject into almost universal 
prominence is one of the most striking psychological 
phenomena in history. Waves of special thought and 
feeling of great power have occasionally swept over 
communities, and for a period defied all the powers of 
resistance from the scoffer and preacher, and the pro- 
saic utterance of the common earthly duties and 
demands ; and then after a while they have ebbed away 
and been soon forgotten. Mental healing may be one 
of these mental tidal waves of transient and unhealthy 
influence. So some contend. Time alone can tell, for 
the conviction of all, though some of us can prophesy 
with strong assurance and to the conviction of many. 

One of the causes of its rapid emergence into pro- 
minence is a powerful reaction against the materialism 
which our age has developed. Evolution has been con- 
ceived materialistically. All who received it thoroughly 
were supposed to be logically materialists. Hence a 
sort of materialistic monism was very prevalent and 
very confident, if not also very dogmatic. 

Against this all our higher and more spiritual facul- 
ties revolted. Men who could not rebut evolution could 
not admit its alleged and apparent materialistic con- 
clusion. They therefore resorted to every possible 
evasion, and were ready to welcome every ally in their 
work. Among these allies appears the doctrine of men- 



12 . CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

tal healing, and the set of ideas associated with it by 
all parties. Mental healing appeals to the senses, and 
can be tested by all. Health is welcomed by all, and the 
healing is supposed to prove the independent power of 
mind. If all this is true, it is more than any form of 
materialism can stand. It is, therefore, one of the most 
natural and powerful reactions against materialism. 

Another of these reactive agencies against material- 
ism is modern spiritualism ; and it is very powerful. 
Its adherents are numerous and its influence is very 
subtle and wide spread. If it is true, it furnishes sen- 
sible proof of our conscious existence after the disso- 
lution of our grosser organism ; and this is incompatible 
with the doctrine that our conscious life is only either a 
mode or an effect of this organism. 

But then this very extensively degenerates into a peep 
and mutter, hide and seek effort at intercourse with 
imperfect fellow-creatures, while the great God, the 
supremest of all facts and potencies, is by many forgot- 
ten or ignored, and even denied. This is every way 
pernicious, and infinitely degrading. It would in the 
end be little better than materialism itself ; because a 
self-conscious Being of infinite perfection is the only 
guarantee of our eternal welfare in the ultimate and 
everlasting domination of the right and the true. 

Hence to many minds of a spiritual order, the vulgar 
spiritualism is offensive. These want a spiritualism 
which is more exaltedly spiritual. They want the Infi- 
nite Spirit to be made all in all, and matter to be nothing 
but a transient and sensible phenomenon ; and all finite 
beings but the self-conscious reflectors of the infinite 
consciousness. These by the ruling quality of their 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 3 

minds are pneumatopathists. On this basis they nat- 
urally seek to explain all the phenomena of mental heal- 
ing ; and from this disposition they naturally oppose the 
doctrine that the healing is done by disembodied human 
agencies, irrespective of God, and without a direct ref- 
erence to him as the only ultimate power. But then 
this is only an accident, a temporary and rudimentary 
feature of spiritualism, not its essential quality, and this 
objectionable feature may soon pass away, and lofty 
minds may hold to a spiritualism which is not obnoxious 
to these obj ections, and which also violates no law of mind. 
As we are agencies of the divine healing power, it is 
conceivable that God may, under certain conditions, use 
us for the same work, after we have passed from this 
life, revealing a spiritualism which is rational, devout 
and holy and lovely. 

Another cause is the manifest progress in psychical 
knowledge and interest in all psychical studies. The 
age has come to see that matter is an insignificant factor 
compared with mind, that mind is nature's king, as sci- 
ence is everywhere proving. Even physical science pays 
homage to mind, as the source of all its victories. We 
are thus led to an indefinite surmise as to the extent of 
the power of mind over matter ; and are quite ready to 
welcome any apparent proof of its direct power over 
disease and all bodily infirmities. Some are doubtless 
too ready to believe and to accept coincidences as causes. 
At all events these things have helped to bring a very 
great and sublime thought to the front, and it will not 
retire to the rear till it is compelled by the resistless 
power of opposing scientific evidence. 

The progress of idealistic conception has also had an 



14 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

influence in the same direction. All modern Germans 
are idealists of one type or another, and English psych- 
ologists, and even the Scotch, have been unable to resist 
its claims, so that they are almost unanimous in admit- 
ting that all we directly know are subjective states, thus 
making all phenomena mental, all forms and sensible 
objects, modes of mind. So mind, as conscious subject, 
is the only known reality and power. What is the ex- 
tent of this power we know not. We are continually 
discovering new laws, which are all laws of mind ; and 
who shall say that we shall not disclose a law and power 
of direct healing ? None. We cannot prove the nega- 
tive ; and others may have satisfactory evidence of 
the affirmative. 

This is the result toward which have tended the 
labors of all the great thinkers of modern times. When 
Descartes, "the father of modern philosophy," sought 
for a certain and indisputable fact, he found it in 
thought. He said, he knew he thought. Thought was 
a certainty, which no one can logically dispute, because 
in disputing they exercise thought and confess a thought 
which they dispute. This, then, he discovered, is all we 
know of the sensible world, that it is a form of thought. 
This is all he is entitled henceforth to affirm of it. The 
known world is a vast congeries of subjective states. 

The next great thinker was an Englishman, John 
Locke. While less consistent and clear than Descartes, 
he adopted his predecessor's method. His immortal 
work is a study of ideas. He too has found that we 
know nothing directly beyond our own ideas. This he 
constantly affirms and nowhere contradicts. These 
ideas, however, often represent things beyond ourselves ; 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 5 

and in this light he makes them the subject of profound 
investigation, not without some confusion, but always 
clear in the affirmation that our subjective states, and 
what they imply, are our only certain knowledge. 

Here the subject was taken up and handled with 
original force by George Berkeley, afterward Bishop of 
Cloyne, Ireland. He treated with much elaboration the 
negative aspect of the question. If, he argued, we 
know nothing but our ideas and feelings, then we have 
no reason for affirming the existence of matter, and 
matter is only an unmeaning word for an unknown 
nothing, — unless we simply appropriate it to designate 
the sense-class of our ideas ; and in this sense he used 
the term, which is the correct use of it. 

A little later in Germany the question was resumed 
with original and extraordinary power by Emanuel Kant. 
He also conceded that all sensible phenomena are known 
only as subjective states, that the known world is 
simply a series of experiences or thoughts and feelings. 
From that day to this few metaphysicians have raised 
any question on this point ; and it is more generally 
agreed on among philosophers to-day than any other 
question which was ever disputed. The subjective or 
egoistic nature of all phenomena is, therefore, one of 
the settled points in modern metaphysics. 

This historic survey of the evolution of thought shows 
that this doctrine has come to stay. It is the effect of 
human development and intellectual ripeness. It is the 
settled and almost unanimous conclusion of scientific 
and philosophical investigations prolonged through the 
ages. It is a result to which all intellectual labors have 
tended and contributed. Affirmed at the very dawn 



1 6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

of human thought, it has always been violently opposed 
by the less profound thinkers, till in our own times op- 
position among philosophers now dies away, and its 
truth is conceded even by material scientists, as seen in 
such eminent names as Tyndall, Clifford, and Huxley 
and Spencer. The last is a philosopher who begins with 
sense and tries to end in sense. 

These historic facts are a very strong guarantee 
that the Pneumatopathy which is based on them has a 
warrant in the nature of things. It has come in the 
order of human progress. It is the normal and healthy 
point of all the ages of human thought. It could not 
come sooner, because the intellectual world was not ripe 
for it, was incompetent to produce or entertain and 
understand it. For the counter reason it could not 
longer be delayed. It is naturally forced on the attention 
of thinkers, and it compells respect. It cannot retire, 
for the world does not recede. It cannot be dismissed, 
because it is equally important and true, and its truth 
grows daily clearer, though it still needs more perfect 
exposition, which it is destined to receive, and thence to 
grow in power. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 7 



CHAPTER II. 

DIFFERENT PHASES OF THE SUBJECT. 

The question has been presented in various and con- 
flicting forms and phases. 

It began under the influence of pantheistic thought. 
Man is but one of the phases of Deity, and one of the 
nobler, if not the noblest, of the divine manifestations. 
According to this, man is God's eternal idea or eman- 
ation or self-reflection, and therefore intrinsically perfect. 
Hence there is no assignable limit to his power for 
good, and let him but perfectly realize his unity with 
God, all evil is at once destroyed. Error and disease 
are only illusion ; and corrected thought in securing 
divine energy destroys them. 

This is often associated and united with what may be 
called the nihilistic phase of mental healing. It neces- 
sarily belongs to the pantheistic phase. If God is all 
and God is good, then there cannot be any evil at all. 
Evil, so called, is absolutely nothing, or at the most is 
only a seeming. As to which of these it is there is a 
division in the ranks. 

The more extreme view is, on the pantheistic assump- 
tion, the more logical. If God is all and infinitely 
good, then absolutely there can never be a particle of 
evil, either in reality or seeming ; for the evil seeming 



IS CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

is an error of thought and feeling, which is impossible in 
infinite good. 

If it is known to exist as a belief, or seeming, or 
claim, it is known to exist as a mode of mind. Now 
there is no other known existence than this, no other 
reality. Mind, and its modes or thoughts, are the only 
realities. Whatever has an existence as a belief, or as 
a feeling, has for the time being a real existence as a 
known mental state, which modern psychology confesses 
is all of reality we ever know ; and that there is not 
anything else, because these are substance as well as 
quality ; since intelligence, life, love and other qualities 
are declared (and rightly, I think) to be substance. 
Hence to admit the seeming, or belief, or claim of evil 
is to admit the substantial reality of evil. 

On the other hand, if there is absolutely no evil, then 
there is nothing for God or man to do in the way of 
healing, or any other method of removing evil, and there 
is never any such action of divine or human goodness 
and power. The whole doctrine of Chistian Science is 
thus self-stultified. It contradicts its own fundamental 
principle whenever it speaks of evil and its removal or 
destruction. 

Not much better is the position of those who flee 
from this absurdity to the position that evil exists as a 
"claim," or as a " belief," as a seeming but not as a 
reality. 

To say it is not real because it does not exist as right 
and true, does not escape the difficulty. It only confuses 
itself by an ambiguous use of the word real. Whatever 
is false and deceptive we call unreal, because it has no 
true and abiding foundation and support in the nature 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 19 

of things and the immutable economy of God. But 
while in that sense we pronounce it unreal, we affirm in 
that very thought that is an actual claim on our belief 
as the true and the right. In other words we pronounce 
it to be real as a (false) mode of thought ; but unreal as 
an affirmation that it is in harmony with God and all his 
universe. 

If we deny the existence of evil even as a mode of 
our own mind we contradict universal experience. We 
are all conscious of suffering, of various kinds of suffer- 
ing, and often very severe. To say that this suffering 
and sufferer are not we, but only mortal mind, is 
only a verbal and meaningless evasion. They may be 
mortal mind for aught we may be supposed to know in 
the present state of discussion ; but it is perfectly 
certain that they are we, because they are our own feel- 
ings, we ourselves feeling so and so. 

Of two minds, one mortal and the other immortal, we 
know nothing. We directly know one mind only, and 
that one is the subject of both joy and sorrow, pain and 
pleasure, whether it be mortal or immortal. We hope 
its sorrows and pains are for the most part mortal, and 
its higher joys immortal. But it is certainly the same 
one individual which is conscious of both ; and so we all 
say "/suffer" and "/enjoy" so and so, the same one 
subject and ego as the ultimate substantial unity of all 
classes of feeling. 

Another phase in which this doctrine is presented by 
one person and a few disciples is what may be described 
as the phase of divine incognizance. This is based on 
the doctrine of the absolute unreality of evil. If evil 
has no manner of existence, it cannot be known. If it 



20 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

has a modal existence, it can be known as a mode of the 
minds which feel it ; and omniscience must so know it. 
This does not make God the subject of the evil. He 
knows it as only a mode of finite minds and as perfectly 
contrasted with his own modes. When Jesus discerned 
and condemned hypocrisy he was not himself a hypo- 
crite ; but just the opposite, as he implicitly affirms. 

Such absurd limitation of the divine cognizance can- 
not be necessary or helpful to anything good. The use 
made of it in healing is wholly illogical. Evil, it is 
said, is an unreality, erroneously believed in as real. 
God cannot have such a false belief, and so does not 
know anything about it. But that last does not follow. 
We may know thoughts which we do not believe to be 
true and real. We may know that another is subject 
to an illusion from which we are free, that there are 
false beliefs which we repudiate. Much more, infinitely 
more, must this be true of God. He must know all, or 
he is not omniscient, is not God, — must know all good as 
in harmony, and all evil as in disharmony, with himself. 

To destroy error does not require the destruction of 
all thought or knowledge of error. If we mistake a 
moonshine simulacrum for a man, and then correct our- 
selves, we do not destroy the thought, but only dispel 
an illusion, a false belief, and the knowledge of the past 
illusion remains. So we may know that others are still 
under illusion from which we are free. An illusion is a 
belief that the false and unreal are true and real. The 
destruction of the illusion is not the destruction of all 
knowledge and thought on the subject, but the percep- 
tion that what was taken for true and real is not so : it 
is to know it as it is, as a false mental action. That is 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 21 

the only possible destruction of error. So God helps 
men to destroy error by helping them to know it as he 
knows it, that it is error and not truth. 

I have no fellowship with those who are so very much 
impressed with the supreme importance of their special 
exposition of the metaphysical method that they have 
labored to reduce it to an absolute formula, to which 
they deem it necessary to conform in order to heal or do 
any real good ; and who deem conformity with the 
method as infallible in its results. The formula is thus 
an unfailing talisman. It makes the person and his 
character of no account. The self-seeking Jews could 
use Paul's formula in vain, or to their own defeat ; and 
character was necessary. Here the devils know the 
formula, no matter about Paul or Jesus. 

The people who cure by faith may be supposed to 
come in here. But they really belong to a class by 
themselves. They are of the old theology, both in 
method and spirit. They are not rationalists or scien- 
tists, but strictly supernaturalists of the old type. They 
do not pretend to refer their healing to any law, but 
wholly to the special will of God. He is the only 
explanation and rationale. He has made his promises 
in the Word and he must fulfill them ; and since he is 
our Father, it seems reasonable that he should make 
and fulfill such promises ; and we therefore ought to ask 
him in child-like faith. — That is all. 

At last there emerges an effort to expound mental 
healing on the basis of materialism. It is said that there 
are very fine fluids or gases which pass from the healer 
to the party to be healed, and this effects and explains 
the beneficial results ; and further that by the regular 



22 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

laws of sense we can impress another person so that 
his own mental action will impart health to his body by 
generating therein a proper normal and healthy action. 
I think also that other schools sometimes descend to 
this, or come very near to it ; and no doubt it has its 
place as an expresson of sensible law and its effect. 

There is good ground for the assurance that the doc- 
trine of mind healing, or Pneumatopathy, is to become a 
permanent power, and to become enshrined in institutions, 
and the study of it will be associated with psychology, 
hygiene and medical science. Its power is indicated by 
the fact that mental healing is admitted and advocated 
by men of various schools, who agree in this, though dis- 
agreeing in everything else. That there are limitations 
is to be expected ; and that there are failures disproves 
not the cases of real success. Its failures are likely to 
diminish in proportion as studied skill makes progress, 
and as more faith in its agency fills the air. Then, too, 
it will get a better average of hopeful cases ; as it gets 
chiefly the doctors' castaways now. 

The actual practice of healing is of course the great 
end. But how to do it, how to secure the power and 
develope it is a very important question. The develop- 
ment of the power has been very manifest since theories 
of the mode of its action have been broached and 
studied. There must be laws which govern it ; and 
these we ought to find out, and in time it will be done. 
Then we shall have a science of mental healing; and 
the science will regulate the practice. 

Some claim that their particular theory is demon- 
strated by the healing agency of its advocates. But 
that argument is equally good for several opposing 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 23 

theories, and so proves nothing distinctive for any. We 
may be good healers without being good expounders of 
the law and principle of healing, just as many an orator 
is unable to philosophize well on his own oratory. 
Theories must find a more scientific justification than 
that. 

It will probably be found in the end that all theories 
have some truth and much error ; and the task of the 
honest and patient investigator will be to find the com- 
mon elements, and to sift the adventitious from the 
necessary. It may be found also that there are elements 
of power which come into operation only under certain 
conditions, and these elements and said conditions will 
in that case need to be determined. 

I propose to enter into an earnest inquiry into these 
questions, and to be as thorough as my ability and 
present opportunities will allow. My opportunities 
and inducements for the study are unusual, both from 
past mental habits and present and recent associations 
and duties. 



24 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



PAET SECOND. 



PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO GOD AND CREATION. 



CHAPTER III. 

EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD. 

It was an ancient maxim that all roads lead to Rome, 
and that was the great thought of Rome, and on that 
she acted with characteristic vigor and skill. It is 
equally true that all lines of thought and feeling lead to 
God. This is evidently the great thought of God, on 
which he has necessarily acted in the construction of 
the universe and the conscious faculties of man. All 
intellectual procedure in this direction may not be very 
logical ; but in that direction it is always pointing and 
looking, notwithstanding all the opposing suggestion of 
sense and a short-winged logic. The intuitions of moral 
sentiment, the direct affirmation of the Best as the 
Real discloses a lofty strength and energy which laughs 
at the dull plodding of a sense-bound understanding. 
This position I have myself reached through trial and 
discovered failure of all the other methods of reaching 
God. This is not a logical procedure from experience, 
nor is it even a very strong induction from experience. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 25 

But it is vastly better. It is the highest action of the 
highest faculty of our being and its affirmation and con- 
clusion are the highest conceivable. 

To this faculty, or to one in whom this power is well 
developed, every form of experience is made the oc- 
casion of its action ; and from every position it mounts 
at once to God ; and there it rests in the consciousness 
of a divine benefaction, a holy hope and peace, and a 
manful bravery and strength to sustain the burden of 
human life. Is he in distress, or does he behold with 
pity and sorrow the misery of others ? He conceives 
and desires relief and satisfaction for the suffering. 
But this can be assured only on the supposition that 
there is a Being of Infinite Perfection. He, and he 
only, can and must make this all perfectly good and 
satisfactory, so that what we know not now we shall 
know hereafter. 

Is he in the enjoyment of many pleasures, possessed 
of large resources ? He must wonder how it comes, and 
he can have no guarantee of the permanence of his hap- 
piness, except in the favor of an immutable Being of 
Moral Perfection. 

Is he baffled and awed with the mystery of existence? 
He cannot but recognize the limitation of his mental 
power ; and by contrast he must think of an Infinite 
Intelligence who absolutely comprehends all things and 
all possibilities, and who therefore can and will gradu- 
ally unfold it to finite minds according to their progress. 
This gives repose, patience, hope ; and inspires rational 
and moderated effort. 

Such an one will be ready enough to discern the signs 
of mind in nature ; but he will not be likely to be blind 



26 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

to opposing signs in this sphere of induction from 
sensible data. He does not wish to carry on the great- 
est and most sacred of all contests on this low plain where 
the enemy has the advantage of position. He will 
" look to the hills whence cometh his help ; " and thither 
he will ascend, and there in the loftiest and most im- 
pregnable fastnesses he can easily and triumphantly 
maintain his cause ; and from that position too he can 
command all the plain which is covered by his long 
range guns, and there he will sing his song : "A mighty 
fortress is our God." 

While this noble character thinks that God is more or 
less manifest in the sensible world, and while he is well 
pleased with those who seem to see very clearly a reflec- 
tion of the divine excellence in this natural mirror, yet 
he is tempted to think (and to their credit) that it is 
their supersensible vision which has unwittingly trans- 
ferred its noble image to this lower surface and object. 
He is very sure there is mind in nature, because there 
is mind in himself. If he comes from nature, nature is 
mind or the creature of mind ; and as sensible nature is 
clearly inferior to his own conscious supersensible self, 
it cannot be his author, and implies an infinitely higher 
power beyond. So it is always from himself, from his 
better and nobler self, that he directly vaults to God as 
the end, the hope and the final and perfect explana- 
tion of all things. 

The more his nobler nature is developed, the more 
perfectly assured does he feel that in this procedure, 
he is under no delusion, and destined to no disappoint- 
ment ; and conversely the more constant and perfect 
his mental action, the stronger is the proof he has 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 2J 

and gives, of his large development in the supreme 
quality and power of a finite being, — communion with 
the Infinite. 

On every hand he meets with signs of misery 
and pain and woe. Where is the evidence of divine 
goodness ? is the inferential inquiry ; and echo answers 
where ; for there is no light for those who dwell only or 
chiefly on this class of phenomena. Hence the man 
of spiritual intuition brings within his range a new 
world, a world of higher rank, yet itself a world of suf- 
fering ; and from this he gathers the hope and prophesy 
of a coming perfect satisfaction. 

Through all the misery goodness shines ; and love, love 
pure, perfect, boundless, becomes absolutely unreserved ; 
and all manifested in suffering and by means of suffering 
for the good of other sufferers. He may not know why 
there is so much misery, nor how to reconcile it all with 
infinite love. But he knows well that there must be 
somehow an infinite love-power underlying the universe, 
or else whence these many and mighty jets and out- 
bursts, hot spouting geysers of pure goodness in all 
times and lands ? They presuppose a worthy source. 
They are the finite expression of an infinite and eternal 
quality. They cannot be self-made, and they cannot 
have a cause inferior to themselves. Their source and 
cause we call God. 

The sciences allied to sense, and abutting in sense, 
help the supersensible and superselfish thought, and 
show this to be the proposed end of all inferior things 
and forms of life. This is beginning to be seen by the 
better class of evolutionists, like John Fiske ; who has 
well expounded the law of progress to be from the 



28 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

sensible to the supersensible, from the non-moral to the 
moral and spiritual, from all the lower to the higher 
and the highest forms of consciousness, and the latter 
as the manifest final cause of the former. Thus intel- 
ligent goodness is seen to animate and preside over all 
things, even the lowest and the darkest. 

This Deity, of course, is not a person in the old sense 
of a mask, or the later sense of organic form. This 
excluded notion is not the doctrine of the orthodox 
Christian Theism of the ages. It is only a very small 
number of inferior minds in the Christian Church that 
have given God a sensible form, and their number is 
growing less as human intelligence makes progress. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 29 



CHAPTER IV. 

MAN AS GOD'S IDEA AND CREATURE. 

As the infinite self-consciousness, God must have 
eternal ideas ; and as eternal, they must be immutable. 

These ideas must embrace all things that ever were 
or are, or shall be ; because of the infinity of their sub- 
ject. 

But while the ideas of God are necessarily eternal, it 
does not follow that all the things they denote are eter- 
nal. Thus, his idea of goodness is eternal and immu- 
table, and his goodness is eternally enduring ; but all the 
forms which goodness wears are not eternal. These 
come and go as occasion calls for them ; and immutable 
goodness itself generates these different forms. The 
eternal has temporal forms, and the immutable varies in 
its modes. 

In like manner eternal power and goodness may be 
forever varying its agency in creating finite and mu- 
table forms of power, in accordance with his eternal 
ideas. 

Immutable and eternal ideas, then, involve temporal 
mutations, and it is the essential nature and power, not 
the form of the power, which is immutable. Nothing 
can ever destroy, or diminish, or change its nature, so 
that it shall become other, or less than it was in its 
quality and power. Infinite goodness, for instance, can 
never be anything less, or else than that ; but it may ex- 
ercise itself in an infinite diversity of forms. 



30 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Plato held that these ideas of God are the archetypes 
of all creation and give their form and rational force 
and significance to all finite, or created things. In this 
he was sublime, and no doubt, he was essentially cor- 
rect. Indeed, the eternal ideas of God must inform all 
creation, because they inform all the divine action 
itself, and he could not act irrespective of them. 

But Plato goes farther, and contemplates these ideas 
as effluences, mental images and forms and forces, which 
emanate from God and become an integral portion, and 
the supremely rational and authoritative portion, of 
each finite individuality, at least if they belong to the 
rank of rational beings ; and it is the power of evolving 
these ideas which makes creatures rational. In this 
sense man is made a partaker of the divine nature. 
Ideas were supposed to come from God, about as beams 
of light, on the corpuscular theory, were supposed to 
come from the sun and strike objects and enter into 
them. This is the way M. Cousin expounds Plato on 
this subject. 

The psychological error which this involves demands 
some attention. It is now nearly universally conceded 
that a man's thoughts are himself in such and such 
mental states. God's ideas are therefore God himself, 
and his eternal ideas are his eternal mental states. 
Now if these ideas constitute man, either in whole or 
part, man is so far God and God is man. This is not 
only pantheism, but it is absolute mental confusion. 
For if the word God means anything it is contradistin- 
guished from the speaker. So of every other term by 
which God is designated. If we call him our Father, 
we distinguish him from ourselves as his children ; and 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 3 I 

a creature is conceived as other than its Creator. On 
the theory in question we ought to drop all the distinc- 
tive terms applied to Deity, and simply say ; we, or we 
and others. These are God and all the God ever know- 
able, for we can surely never directly know more of God 
than his ideas, that is ourselves. And so it turns out 
we can never know more than ourselves in knowing 
God. But then it is enough to know ourselves if we 
are God or God is we. 

Awe-struck with the terrible darkness into which we 
are plunged, we must hastily retire from so false and 
self-stultifying a position. God's ideas are simply him- 
self, the pure intellectual forms of his own infinite and 
eternal intelligence. They are not man, nor angel, nor 
son, nor emanation, nor effluxes of or from him ; but 
they are himself only, and nothing else yesterday, today 
and forever. His ideas of his creatures are the eternal 
egoistic archetypes according to which in due con- 
nections he creates them. 

The modest doctrine which identifies man with God 
will of course be humble enough to find itself taught in 
Scripture. We are, therefore, reminded that we are 
said to be "partakers of the divine nature," that "God 
is all in all," that besides him there is none else. We 
are all familiar with those words, with never a doubt of 
their meaning, or that their meaning is radically different 
from that which is here attributed to them. We are 
partakers of the divine nature in virture of our being 
created in the image and likeness of God, and in virtue 
of being the recipients of constant blessed effects of the 
gracious agency of God on our minds. God is all in 
all, and the only one in the sense, that apart from him 



32 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

we should be nothing, and there could be nothing 
without him, so that compared with him all else are 
nothing. This exposition accords with a habit of 
speech familiar to all languages, and no other has ever 
been entertained till in our own age the pantheistic 
interpretation was found necessary to bolster a jangle 
of incoherent words. As much as any other one I 
desire to honor God ; but I should prefer a different 
method to that of those who make God one with man, 
or man one with God, in substance. That method 
either makes too much of men or too little of God. 
Neither Spinoza or the left-winged Hegelians can 
blind us here. It is better to be simple Christians. 

All God's ideas are necessarily perfect, as we have 
said; but the meaning of the word perfection varies 
relatively to the object to which it is applied. We have 
heard of "a perfect ass," of "a perfect fraud," as well 
as of " a perfect logician " and " perfect candor," and 
" a perfect saint." But in all sincerity and in good ac- 
cord with the best usage of all languages, we call that 
perfect which is thoroughly well adapted to the end of 
its existence, or which conforms in detail to its type. A 
machine is pronounced perfect when it is perfectly 
adapted to the work it has to do. It is perfect in that 
relation. But that affirmation does not necessarily 
imply that it is perfect in any other relation. Indeed 
•it is rather supposed to be the more imperfect in every 
other relation, for the very reason of its perfection here. 
The more perfect anything is in its adaptation to any one 
particular, it is by consequence the less adapted to any- 
thing else ; and the more complicated it is in this adapt- 
ation, the less it is adapted to various other things. An 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 33 

ordinary railway car is good for its object, but that per- 
fection there disqualifies it for being pronounced per- 
fect or at all practical as a pony chaise. A watch may 
be perfect for keeping time, but it is not good as an 
article of diet. 

In the organic and mental world the same principle 
operates with more conspicuous power. Any develop- 
ment beyond a certain degree always withdraws power 
and attainment from other quarters. There has never 
been any universal genius. The men who have been 
preeminent in some relations have never had the same 
preeminence in all directions. It was said that Ole 
Bull was perfect at the fiddle, and Litzt at the piano. 
But all concede that their perfection did not go far 
beyond these points, and that it was attained even with 
their native genius in that direction only by foregoing 
culture and development in other directions, where 
thousands far surpass them. 

Now God's ideas of his creatures must be contem- 
plated as creatures; that is, as finite; and as having 
various relations to each other and to himself; and their 
perfection must consist in their entire conformity with 
these relations. All this, so far from implying that men 
have existed from all eternity and are absolutely and 
immutably perfect, implies just the contrary. Nothing 
but God has existed from eternity, and his eternal ideas 
are himself. 

His eternal ideas of man are perfect, because they 
comprise a conception of all the excellence and all the 
limitations of a finite being. According to this idea 
God has made man as a real, concrete, self-conscious 
individual. He is thus the expression of the eternal 



34 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

idea of God. In this sense only can it be truly said 
that man is perfect, or that he has existed with God or 
in the mind of God from all eternity. God's plans and 
purposes are from eternity; but as they are unfolded 
under an order of time, they have to follow a law of 
creation, generation and development. We, and God's 
thought and purpose concerning us are not the same, 
but infinitely different, one being man and the other 
God, since God's thought and purpose are God and 
nothing else ; and God's thought and purpose are real- 
ized in us by our creation and development according to 
a law of eternal reason. 

Now God's eternal idea of man is his eternal ideal of 
man. But a divine eternal ideal can never be realized 
in time, however extended. It will require all eternity 
for its attainment, that is, it will never be attained, for- 
ever advancing, but never nearing a terminus. Thus 
everlasting progress is a primary law and the normal 
process and condition of all finite beings. 

The concrete reality never answers perfectly to the 
abstract ideal. There is no perfect right line or curve 
or any other geometrical figure. So the ideal of a finite 
creature can never be absolutely attained. No matter 
how exalted and noble a creature may be, or supposed 
to be, we can conceive a loftier excellence as still 
possible. Relative to the ideal, imperfection is a charac- 
teristic of all finite beings forever. Relative to the law 
of their action and of the end of their existence they 
may be pefect. 

Relative to the law and end of all action, they may be 
perfect, though they are the subjects and victims of 
error and suffering ; because through error and suffering 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 35 

they may be making sure progress and better progress 
than were otherwise possible to them. In that case 
their present perfection consists in going through such 
error and evil in just that way; because it is right and 
conducive to their ultimate highest dignity and felicity, 
and to the glory of God and the well-being of his 
creation. 

As the Bible speaks of creation, of man as God's 
creature, man cannot be eternal, if that statement is 
accepted. If man and all existence is eternal, we have 
no Creator and no creature. This certainly goes against 
all conspicuous Christian thought through all the past 
centuries ; and to many it appears satirical to call such 
a notion " Christian Science," and that it had better be 
called " the opposition of science" and of Christianity. 

I accept the Christian conviction that there is a 
Creator and a creation; or in other words, that there is 
an infinite eternal Being ; and that besides him there is 
a finite being, not eternal, which began to be at the will 
of the Infinite, and which by the same will is rendered 
immortal. 

The old pagan objection infused into our modern phi- 
losophy, that there cannot be anything besides God, else 
he is not infinite, only raises a battle of words, a con- 
tention raised on the definition of a word. It defines 
God, or the Infinite, as all that is. The Theistic and 
Christian thinkers of the world have defined these terms 
differently. That is the difference between the two 
parties. 

To define the infinite as all that is, is an irrational 
utterance. It contains no glimpse of a principle. Why 
should that which is be infinite ? To this there is no 



36 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

answer. All that is may be finite. That is logically 
possible. Why then affirm the contrary ? Infinite 
means etymologically, without bounds ; but whatever is 
is not necessarily without bounds. Not only that, but 
if we include spaces, numbers and quantities in the 
question, which we must if we include all things, then 
existence must be forever limited ; because whatever 
these may be, they may be conceivably augmented ; and 
the attainment of the end of a limit or the limitless is 
forever impossible. 

Omit all finite aggregates from the problem, and this 
fatal difficulty is eliminated. We now deal with being 
as a simple question, aud therefore with the idea of one 
Being. Our question is, how shall we define this Being ? 
Or what is the Infinite ? Our answer to this question 
should be all comprehensive, logical and final. I know 
not that any attempt at such an answer has ever been 
made, unless we consider as such three or four loose 
statements or suggestions which have obtained dis- 
tinction in the history of thought. The first of these 
is found in the Hebrew Scriptures, where they say noth- 
ing is too hard for God, and nothing is impossible with 
God. The next utterance is by Anselm, as that than which 
nothing can be conceived as greater. With the Greek 
the answer was put into three letters, Pan, and the 
Hindoo answer was in meaning the same. The last 
answer we have already refuted. Anselm's answer is 
obnoxious to the objections which are fatal to that, sub- 
jectively applied. For if you bring quantity or degree 
into the question, there is always a beyond or greater to 
every degree, whether of conception or external reality. 
There is no degree or quantity beyond which there can- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. %J 

not be a greater, both in fact and in conception — until 
we attain that definite Infinite which still remains to be 
defined. The declared almightiness, for which nothing 
is too hard, itself requires definition, and one which 
shall modify its apparent force. For some things are 
too hard for any one, even for the Infinite. He cannot 
make a straight curve, nor a round square, nor a finite 
line without an end or with only one end. All will re- 
cognize this, and fully assent to it. Why ? Because all 
see that to do that involves a self-contradiction. That is 
the proper and final answer. It furnishes this absolute and 
limitless generalization, negative and positive, that God 
cannot do anything which involves a self-contradiction y 
and he can do anything which does not involve a self-con- 
tradiction. This is the perfect definition of the Infinite. 
It cannot be said of the finite ; it must be said of the 
Infinite. This is perfectly explicit and all-comprehend- 
ing ; and leaves nothing to be conceived as further 
needed or possible. 

Here then, we have reached the intelligible and logi- 
cal foundation, the utterly ultimate of all thought and 
inquiry on the subject. Now this Infinite is able to 
create other beings of indefinitely various degrees and 
kinds of faculty — unless such creation involves a self- 
contradiction. On those who hold that it does the bur- 
den of proof lies to show it. To my poor vision it 
seems perfectly clear that the infinite can make that to 
be which was not, that he can will it and it shall be and 
shall stand, that there shall be other beings besides 
himself, and that these shall sustain to each other and 
to him certain fixed relations. He is thus able to in- 
crease the sum of being which is an infinite superiority 
'to him who is not able to do this. 



38 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Man, then, is not God nor a part of God, but abso- 
lutely God's creature, not infinite but finite, not eternal 
but temporal, whose mode of thought and action are al- 
ways temporal, or under the law of time or the relations 
of succession ; and his limitations are further indicated 
by his special conditions, to which so much of his 
consciousness is subject. Thus all creatures are con- 
tradistinguished from the Creator eternal and infinite. 
By the same laws also they can be discriminated from 
each other ; and by the same means each can discrimi- 
nate his own mental states and regulate the forms of 
his own consciousness. He is mentally an occupant of 
time, and bodily he is an occupant of space, and meta- 
physically he constitutes both, because both are only 
modes of his consciousness. 

As finite and temporal all creatures are happily sub- 
ject to the law of progress as involved necessarily in the 
divine ideal of a creature, as well as the human idea. 
All creatures therefore, where they are not wilfully per- 
verse, are conscious links in a grand and endless line, 
rank on rank, ever higher, and each forever rising into 
the rank above. Here there is no room for despond- 
ency or ennui. Hope is always alert and always self- 
fulfilled. Whatever may seem to be a mere delay is 
only an invisible progress, a gathering of forces which 
have been expended or scattered ; or to express it 
otherwise, it is the holding of a position, the maintain- 
ence of a principle till the cycling of events, the circling 
of rational seasons, mature the labor and bestow the 
reward in the expected harvest. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 39 



;p_a_:rt third, 



PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO LAW. 



CHAPTER V. 

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LAW. 

The study of law carries us back to the study of the 
nature of things, and their necessary action ; for their 
intrinsic nature is the source of all law, whether it be 
statute law or what is sometimes called natural law. 
We would not, like some, begin with a "primary belief 
in the uniformity of nature." " Beliefs " cannot be prim- 
ary. Besides, I may believe one thing and another man 
disbelieve it. A belief should be supported by a reason. 

We have a demonstration drawn from the conception 
of being as a force. So long as a thing exists it is what 
it is, and it acts from its nature and according to its 
nature, because it is the nature or quality which acts, 
and, therefore, it must act uniformly so long as it exists 
as it is, and no longer. 

General laws are thus seen to be an intrinsic and log- 
ical necessity ; and they are not arbitrary and optional 
with God, as many Theists have supposed. All things 



40 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

are forces, and forces must act according to their nature, 
uniformly ; and such actions constitute the laws of things ; 
and God can change these laws only by changing the 
nature of things, or destroy them only by destroying the 
things themselves. 

There are two main conceptions and forms of law. 
One is that of a command by a personal authority, 
whether that authority be the enactment of a legislative 
body, or the decree of a monarch or the revealed will of 
God. This is the civic and theological conception of law 
which we call the injunctive law. The other conception 
is that of a series of phenomena which occur with unde- 
viating regularity, which are the expression of an un- 
changing force. (A few men, Positivists, would omit the 
rast clause.) This is the scientific conception of law, 
whether physical or psychological, and we will call it the 
executive law, because it always executes itself. 

In point of fact, though not in human conception, the 
executive law is the more primitive and ancient of the 
two. It exists from of old and from eternity in the 
nature of God, and in the material universe from its 
creation, while the conception of it by man is compara- 
tively quite recent. Injunctive law originates with the 
earliest consciousness of personal will and power, and 
this comes long before there is any conception of natural 
or executive law as an un deviating, regular succession of 
phenomena. The lowest savages may conceive the for- 
mer, and act on it steadily, while the conception of the 
latter implies a considerable degree of mental develop- 
ment and scientific knowledge. Hence, it is only in 
modern times that the conception of executive law has 
become conspicuous, and it is even yet disputed by many 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 41 

polemical Theists. The orientals, and the ancient 
Greeks and Romans, who were far less than we, im- 
pressed with the regularity of nature, could have but a 
dim and vacillating notion of the scientific law, and could 
seldom use the term law definitely in that sense. 

Yet we have some striking examples of this use of 
the term law in one ancient Greek writer, who is in some 
respects the greatest and most famous of them all, and 
of greater authority. We refer to St. Paul. It will be 
readily allowed that he was no innovator in science to 
the injury of religion, and that he was a psychologist, 
(especially of the moral powers) of no mean rank. His 
analysis of the propensities and moral powers of the 
numan soul shows a keen blade wielded with a strong 
arm and steady nerve. No human motive escapes him, 
and he fails not to probe the heart to its centre, and to 
weigh its merits and demirits in a just balance. 

As a moral anatomist he reveals to us, in the Epistle 
to the Romans, five laws which are found to operate in 
the soul of man, though some of them, it is said, do not 
operate in all men, and in no one do they all operate at 
the same time. These laws he himself designates as 
"the law in the members," " the law of sin and death," 
" the law of the mind," and "the law of the spirit of 
life." It is evident that by none of these laws does he 
mean the injunctive law. They are not duties enjoined. 
They are the methods according to which religion and 
irreligion, or godliness and ungodliness, or sin and holi- 
ness, uniformly work in the human heart and life. 

Perhaps there is not so much difference between these 
two forms of law as is generally supposed. They have 
some essential elements in common. 



42 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Both are characterized by universality, which includes 
uniformity. That is, they are not selective and capri- 
cious. They apply, without exception, to all of a class, 
any exception or deviation from one straight line of 
operation being their violation. Both are instinct with 
rewards and penalties. Conformity confers benefaction ; 
transgression is visited with suffering more or less. 
Especially are some of our psychological laws fraught 
with benefaction or malefaction, according as they are 
respected or disregarded. 

The executive law is the primary and ulterior source 
whence the injunction law is derived. Heretofore it has 
been generally supposed among Theistic divines that the 
injunctive is the true and original type of law, and that 
the scientific or injunctive law is only entitled to the 
name of law, partly as an accomodation and figure of 
speech, and partly on the assumption that it is the crea- 
ted expression of the design and will of Deity. It is 
very natural that such a view should have long prevailed, 
because the conception of the injunctive law r necessarily 
came first in the order of time in consequence of man's 
early and prolonged ignorence of the course of nature, 
external and internal, and his incapacity to discern gen- 
eral forces and trace uniformities. Hence, when unifor- 
mities began to be observed, they were designated by 
the term law, because they bore some resemblance to 
the operation of the injunctive law, while only the latter 
was deemed to be law, real and proper. In our times 
the executive law has attained a rank of acknowledged 
intrinsic dignity and significance. But a consistent con- 
ception and philosophy of it is yet wanting. 

This law God himself obeys in all his action. Created 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 43 

laws and rules are created by him just as they are, 
because the immutable force of his own nature rendered 
them necessary. The necessity is only from himself, and 
is a good and wise and holy necessity, because he is 
intrinsically wise and good and holy, so that he "cannot 
lie," and "cannot deny himself." 

In the creation of the material universe God has 
created material forces, and these forces necessarily 
have their own laws or modes of uniform operation, from 
which they can never deviate, except as they are made 
to do so by the power which created them, or by some 
power endorsed and delegated by him. In giving to 
matter, so-called its properties, God has given to it its 
laws. 

The same holds true of all the powers of sensation 
and physical action which, so far as is known to us, are 
states of our consciousness. We know that they have 
their laws or modes of uniform operation, and because 
of this we know how to use them. If they were not 
regular and uniform in their action relative to each other 
and the external world, we should be in utter confusion, 
and existence would be impossible. The same train of 
remark applies to the interior powers of emotion, of in- 
tellection, and, to some extent, of volition. In short, 
moral law, civil law, all statute or injunctive law, all fore- 
thought or volitive action, presuppose the executive law 
of involuntary uniformities. 

The executive law is thus presented to us with a sig- 
nificance which makes it one of the sublimest of all 
possible conceptions. It extends to all possible phenom- 
ena, from the centre to the circumference of all things 
and from the Deitv himself to the smallest atom. There 



44 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

is not a mote in the light or the darkness in all the vast 
variety of universal being that can escape the sweep of 
the boundless radius-vector of the scientific law. This 
law is but the form in which all things operate, and it 
springs from the very essence of all being as quality or 
force, whence its co-extension with all being as showing 
the nature of all. All other laws spring out of this, and 
this is their justification. God springs out of the laws 
of his own nature and those of man. 

The trite proposition that law implies a law-giver, may, 
with equal truth, be reversed or converted. A law-giver 
implies a law. He cannot give what he does not possess, 
and he cannot absolutely create a moral law. It is not 
an arbitary enactment of him as Creator. It is coeval 
with him as the eternal perfect person. It rules him, as 
his subjective, masterful selfhood, and determines his 
actions alike in creation and government. Holding to 
the truth of the doctrine of creationism, we are, not 
withstanding, compelled to affirm that erection could 
never be purely arbitrary, of the will alone, as volition, 
but must be dictated by the whole nature of the Infinite 
Perfection, which is eternal and immutable, and which 
necessitates certain modes of uniform operation. Thus 
the law given by the great Law-giver implies another 
law which dominates the law-giver himself ; and this 
primary and ulterior law, which is the law of the divine 
nature, is an unchanging force ; and because unchanging, 
it operates uniformly, and necessitate the law which is 
laid on us in the revelation of his will. 

The doctrine of the necessity of general laws is based 
on the conception of all being as a force. God's being 
is a nature, a quality or force. According to his nature 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 45 

or quality or force He necessarily acts ; and had he been 
different in his nature or attributes, he would have acted 
differently and with different results. Hence, it is that 
we judge of his character by his works. The created uni- 
verse is the manifestation of the divine powers and dis- 
position so far as they are known or knowable, because 
it is the necessary effect of the operation of these powers. 

This principle holds good of all possible existences. 
Nothing but force or power can do or suffer anything ; 
and according to the nature and degree and connection 
of the force will be its doing and suffering. It is thus we 
do and must judge men and all the inferior creation. 

God himself, in all his own inner, as well as outer 
action, must exemplify general law, simply because he is 
always the same. His nature being unchanged and his 
action always corresponding with his nature, he must act 
uniformly ; and that is just what is meant by conformity 
to general law. He is intelligent, and therefore his 
nature gives and exemplifies general or uniform laws of 
intelligence. He is just and good, and therefore exemp- 
lifies the uniform law or laws of justice and goodness. 
In like manner external nature and our own nature 
operate according to what they are, and that operation 
constitutes their uniform or general laws. 

All laws are general because they are uniform, else 
they would be no laws at all. There are no particular 
laws. Law is but a term which expresses the continuity 
of force and its consequent and necessited uniformity of 
operation. Strictly speaking, natural laws are never 
changed or modified. They can only be annihilated by 
the annihilation of the substance or force of which they 
are the effect and expression. They always operate the 



46 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

same result in the same connections and circumstances, 
and never in different connections so that they are in this 
respect all alike. 

The interposition of a new power will change the 
result ; and if this new power is supernatural we shall 
have miracle, but no violation of our principle, as each 
power still acts according to its nature. The only pos- 
sible difference on the score of generality consists in the 
number of objects of the same nature and connections, 
and therefore as exemplifying the same law. The falling 
of a single apple exemplifies the law of gravitation, and 
this law extends to all tangible objects. It is not the ex- 
tent but the uniformity of its operation that makes it a 
law. It would be as truly a law of gravitation if it were 
confined to apples or to any particular variety of apples, 
and belonged to all of that class. 

Indeed, every object has its own laws, laws which are 
born of its own peculiar nature, a nature which is a 
peculiar force or combination of forces, and which, there- 
fore, always operates accordingly. Whatever objects 
operate alike or according to the same law are by that 
fact proved to be of the same nature or quality, the 
peculiar quality being known by the peculiar mode and 
results of its operation. 

As natural laws are nothing but the methods in which 
substances as forces operate, and that, necessarily, from 
their nature, whether in God or his creation, God cannot 
dispense with them, nor, in anywise, modify their action 
and issue, except by a supernatural interposition equal to 
the annihilation of an old, or the creation of a new force, 
or substance. As God cannot dispense with general laws, 
it was not by his "determination," at all, that they were 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 4/ 

inaugurated. They are, some of them, eternal, and rule 
all his own action. In the creation of the universe, also, 
he has no choice between general laws and no general 
laws, but only between different possible forms, or classes, 
of general laws. It was his prerogative to determine 
what kind of forces he would create, and, therefore, what 
kinds of laws he would inaugurate. He, necessarily, acts 
according to general laws, from his own power, wisdom 
and goodness ; and all created things, necessarily, act, or 
operate, according to general laws, from the natures or 
qualities which God has given them, whatever they may 
be. 

Apparent fortuities are only apparent, and what ap- 
pear so to one mind will not so appear to another of 
superior culture and intelligence. Natural laws, as the 
exponent of natural forces and creative agency, rule here 
with as much regularity as in the movements of the great 
celestial orbs. 

To make this of service in religion, we should show, as 
we easily can, that general laws being necessary, in spite 
of omnipotence, the evils which flow from them, whether 
by nature or the perverse zvill of man, may be no impeach- 
ment of tJie divine peffection ; and that his use of them 
does not, as Mill argues, indicate divine limitation. 

The prevalence of general laws is proof of neither 
good nor evil, neither wisdom nor folly, neither power 
now weakness, in the Ruler of the world. It is only the 
kind of general laws which are of any force on these 
points or in proof of the character and attributes of God. 



48 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LAWS OF THE DIVINE ACTIVITY. 

Distinct from nature or the known universe, God has 
a nature of his own which constitutes his being, his indi- 
viduality, and his attributes and character. 

This must be the ground and source of all his action. 
There can be no other before creation, and after creation 
there can be no other so high. 

Hence, as this is eternal nature all Divine action would 
seem to be a necessity, which, however, is denied on 
other grounds. It is, therefore, an open question, whether 
the nature of God admits or excludes the power of alter- 
native choice and action ; that is, whether alternative 
freedom or rigid and unvariable necessity is the supreme 
law of the Divine activity. 

I stand with those who make the Divine agency a 
Divine necessity, and affirm, with Arminius, that he is 
not good, and holy, and wise, by his own free volition, 
but by eternal subjective necessity, and, with thorough- 
going Augustinians, that the same necessity determines 
all his actions in the creation and government of the 
universe. This Divine necessity, because subjective 
wholly, is not, in any degree, the effect of any external 
cause, it being a part of the theory that there is nothing 
external till it is created by this only eternal and immut- 
able One. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 49 

This Divine necessity has on one side an aspect of 
freedom, to which we have already adverted. The will 
itself is really never coerced and never can be. The 
impossibility is intrinsic and insuperable, for, in order to 
do this it would have to will against its own volition at 
the instant of making it, which is self contradictory. 
In this sense, freedom is the essential and characteristic 
attribute of will in God or man. This is what we have 
ment to designate in the phrase already used of volitional 
freedom. This is very different from, and may or may 
not be associated with the probationary moral freedom 
which could actually at any time have done otherwise 
than it did ; and the former of these is often confounded 
with the latter, or, rather, made to overslaugh the latter. 

In contrast with this volitional freedom, it is of the 
utmost importance to have a clear conception of that 
which Arminians contend for as the moral and probation- 
ary freedom which belongs to rational being under moral 
probation, and constitutes the power and limits the dura- 
tion of such probation. This is a very peculiar and 
extraordinary endowment. It is the moral flexor of the 
soul which, in any circumstances, can turn either way 
with equal force and to an equal extent. It is superior 
to all conditions and circumstances of natural force ; so 
that it can always act for or against what is conceived as 
duty and right. In this endowment man has a degree of 
power to change all circumstances for better or worse in 
their moral influence, and to accept or reject the aid of 
Divine grace in support of the better force and volition, 
and in opposition to all evil. 

If God is infinite and eternal in his moral perfection 
he must be immutable in his moral condition. In him- 



50 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

self, in his own nature, he comprises always infinitely the 
highest possible motives of action. These motives, it is 
assumed, are perfectly good, and, therefore, forever must 
continue to be good, which is implied in his psychological 
freedom, arid all this implies that he must forever will 
accordingly. 

Moral quality is the super-eminent quality, and to be 
void of it is at the utmost remove from infinite perfec- 
tion, and in a being of such excellence, moral perfection 
cannot be supposed to be ever, for a moment, in the 
slightest degree of jeopardy. Infinite moral perfection 
must be immutably perfect. Some have strongly dis- 
counted the moral element from the conception of per- 
fection, or at least from perfect happiness. Without 
moral excellence, omnisciense and limitless power would 
only be boundless imperfection of character, and it would 
be horrible in proportion to the agent's power of achieve- 
ment. Toward such a beins: distrust and dread would be 

o 

universally the dominant feeling; and his worshipers 
would be only fawning sycophants, truculent, selfish and 
ambitious. His rule over his creation would, therefore, 
necessarily be very unhappy ; and some daring Prome- 
theus, should such a one ever rise, would be the true hero 
of the universe, and Shelly's " Prometheus Unbound " 
would be the ideal drama, and longed-for epic of the world. 
Infinite perfection must, therefore, be conceived as inclu- 
ding moral excellence without alloy or limit, or possible 
eclipse or blot, or diminution of its perfect brightness. 
Nor could such a non-moral or immoral being be any 
happier than his subjects. He would view himself for- 
ever in the clear and perfect light of his own omniscience. 
He must, therefore, be perfectly cognizent of his own 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 5 I 

moral defect, and of how much better moral perfection 
would be. 

There is also a law of duty to the creature which must 
control the action of Deity. While he is immutably 
perfect, we are not thus precluded from applying to him 
a law which he is known to fulfil. In the very act of 
creating God puts himself under obligation to the creat- 
ure, an obligation which varies with the nature, rank and 
condition of the creature, and because of his infinite per- 
fection, God must recognize and fulfil this obligation. 

There is a law of benevolence to be observed toward 
all. He may not put any of his creature to unnecessary 
suffering, and he seems bound to give to them some 
proper scope and advantage corresponding to their nature 
and dignity, and with due respect to their mutual relation 
and total effect. But what these are, he is, of course, 
the only competent judge. 

There is an obligation under which he rests, of show- 
ing distinguishing favors to the righteous, as righteous- 
ness and goodness are elements of supreme excellence 
and worthiness ; and infinite perfection cannot fail to 
give them fit recognition and peculiar honor and felicity. 

As the counterpart of this there is a law which binds 
the Deity to humble and chastise all wrong or unright- 
eousness ; yet, still with pity for the transgressor as a 
sentient being, which is always the proper object of ben- 
evolent regard. The law of benevolence never dies, 
only it cannot operate without obstruction on bad charac- 
ters. It is the moral wrong in them which is the object 
of detestation and punishment, that its force and viru- 
lence may be diminished and destroyed, if possible ; 
after which, if that is ever effected, the benevolence, 



52 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

which has always sought their welfare, has free scope 
again. 

The denial of natural law in the physical world, was 
one of the old prescientific pieties, but in these days, it 
is divested equally of piety and common sense. There 
is no force in matter, some say, and therefore it can be 
productive of neither good nor harm. You may eat 
oyster shells, as one said, and it will be neither better nor 
worse than eating oysters. Any child can eat green and 
unripe fruit of any kind, as much as it likes, without 
harm, and alleged poisons are not poisons at all. Such 
sayings are not merely follies, they are sins. They know 
better. They know by experience the power of certain 
drugs. 

A false pretense is not only more wicked, but it is 
more dangerous to society than any error and supersti- 
tion. To believe that God will suspend physical laws for 
the benefit of good people may possibly work harm ; but 
it leaves intact, and may foster the noblest elements of 
our nature, the moral and spiritual. The pretense that 
there are no such laws is not only moral ruin to the indi- 
vidual thus acting, but it opens the door to every vice 
and every crime, so far as it is allowed. It is a natural 
and effective pretext for indulgence in every propensity 
and passion. Why should we not indulge if there are 
no laws, and if no harm can come from anything we do, 
as is alleged ? Why should not those who are so inclined 
drink, swear, lie, cheat, seduce, poison, or do anything 
else on the plea that it is all nothing, and can result in 
nothing — at least nothing but an illusion, which again 
is nothing, and should be dispelled by all powerful minds. 

When urging mesmeric or other mental action to the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 53 

bodily and mental derangement of certain hated parties, 
one of this class pleads that it was all right, because 
u They are only myths." If they are only myths, it is right 
to destroy them. If, as is often alleged, all sensible 
things are only a lie, it is right to destroy them, and a duty 
so to do. If there is no law of nature or God which 
rules them, there can be no law of obligation concerning 
them. 

I would not condemn as morally self-abandoned all who 
adopt the theory we are condemning. I am very certain 
that some of them are good people, who would abhor the 
moral implications of their theory, and who from indis- 
position, combined with logical limitations, have never 
seen these consequences as the rational and practical 
result of their principles. I hope all such will feel 
assured that I wish not to do them any injustice. Far 
from it. Nothing is more common than to see good 
people using through ignorance bad and dangerous prin- 
ciples innocently, and with little direct harm, and without 
any thought of aught but good. All honor to them. 
But this should not close our lips against the false prin- 
ciples and their dangerous tendency. It is, of course, 
quite obvious that all these people, good and bad, have to 
use and speak of physical law. They cannot avoid this, 
any more than they can avoid using and speaking of sun- 
light, which exemplifies these laws. They can also 
adduce these expressions in proof of their acknowledge- 
ment of natural law, and as a rebuttal of our charges. 



54 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CLASSES OF LAWS. 

There are different classes of laws, which act with a 
degree of independence of each other. We say a degree 
of independence, because this independence has its limi- 
tations. Indeed, there is always a connection, we be- 
lieve, between all classes of laws ; but, it is often very 
indirect, and only at certain points, and is far from 
extending to all particular forms and processes of each 
class in relation to all the other classes. There must be 
an ultimate connection, because man is a unity, and all 
his subjective states of every class have their immediate 
source in himself, their common subject. But this unity 
allows a diversity in thought, which, as we have seen, is 
verified in the facts of experience. 

This difference of classes of laws implies that from 
their very nature as geneically or specifically different, 
they are not related to other classes of laws as directly 
as they are related to the laws of their own class. Physi- 
cal laws are more closely and constantly related to each 
other than they are to supersensible laws ; so that we can 
often effect sensible results by sensible methods more 
readily than by purely supersensible action. If we want 
to build a house, we cannot effect it by simply saying in 
thought : "Be built, O house." We must use material or 
sensible methods, many, various and prolonged, or it will 
never be done. On the other hand, supersensible results 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 55 

can be effected mainly or wholly through the exercise of 
supersensible powers in accordance with supersensible 
laws. We may use material laws for this end, but we 
must use them intelligently. We cannot instruct and 
educate another merely by using articulate sounds. We 
must ourselves think, and so think that we wisely and 
effectively use our words for the end in view. 

Here we see how science enjoins us to study each 
department by itself, as well as in relation to other de- 
partments ; and to observe and utilize the laws of each 
department in special mutual relation, as well as in a 
larger and less intimate relation to all other departments. 
Physical laws must first and most closely be studied and 
followed relative to each other, and then in their common 
relations to superphysical laws. On the other hand, the 
department of thought or the higher region of conscious- 
ness, ought to be studied and investigated, so as to find 
out the nature and mutual relation of its laws, and then 
the relation of all to other and inferior departments. 

This, therefore, teaches that in the science of healing 
the body through mind, we are not to ignore all physical 
and organic laws. The orator studies and uses his organ- 
ism, and the atmosphere, and all the physical elements of 
the situation to impress the minds of his hearers. Like- 
wise the philosopher. It is by the use of sensible laws 
that they attain supersensible ends. If sensible means 
are necessary for effective work in the upper sphere, how 
much more so in the sphere of sense itself. We daily 
rest after labor to recuperate exhausted vigor. We eat 
and drink daily to repair worn out tissues, and to replace 
fluids which have evaporated or flowed away. Without 
this our organic life and vigor could not be long sustained. 



56 CHRISTIAN PNEUM\TOPATHY. 

Whoever stops here must give a scientific reason, if he 
can, for so doing. But then, no one can stop here. In 
ten thousand other ways and forms all use sensible means 
to effect sensible ends. They conform to recognized 
laws of sense as conditions of gratifying sense. 

I know not that this principle has ever been questioned, 
except in one particular department, that of healing the 
sick — mental treatment. Here we have seen persons 
come straight from a good dinner to tell a suffering pa- 
tient not to use any sensible means for their recovery. 
This is a very strange anomaly. No scientific reason has 
ever been given for its justification. Nothing but dog- 
matic assertions have ever been urged on the subject. 
It is inconsistent with itself ; it is contradicted by all 
experience ; it is the very opposite of science. It is 
often as cruel also as it is irrational. I have known met- 
aphysical doctors refuse to their tortured victims a drop 
of water to cool their parched tongues, for fear any sub- 
sequent good results should be attributed to physical 
agency. One of these sufferers in my congregation, as 
the family informed me, wanted a little acid and water to 
relieve a painful alkaline taste in his mouth, and it was 
forbidden, and the poor man suffered on, and was ulti- 
mately relieved by death. 

It is evident that in this matter there is a lack of 
common sense, as well as of scientific method and prac- 
tical consistency. It ought to be clear that some physi- 
cal means should be used for the welfare of the sick, as 
well as for the healthy and strong. It is the acme of un- 
feeling folly for the healthy physician to eat, sleep and 
clothe himself appropriately for his comfort and contin- 
ued health and vigor, and yet forbid the action of the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 57 

same principle in relation to the suffering, the wretched 
and helpless, who are committed to his care. Allow 
such a procedure as scientifically just, and there is no 
form or degree of iniquity and cruelty and neglect 
which it would not approve and propagate. 

We, therefore, need here some just and sound princi- 
ples for our guidance, principles which are the compre- 
hensive expression of physical and organic laws, and 
which, at the same time, are in harmony with supersen- 
sible laws. What these are, and what rules of prac- 
tical treatment may grow out of them, we cannot here 
expound in detail. But some things may be said as an 
index of a whole volume. 

One of these is that there should always be the best 
nursing that can be had. This accords with physical 
and organic law, and all the laws of the heart, social and 
domestic, and for that reason it accords with all the true 
laws of mind. 

Another principle is, that any physical action or 
property applied or used inwardly or outwardly, if it is 
known to accord with the known laws of organic want 
and supply, is to be discreetly used. It may be called 
food or drink or medicine, or what you like, but it should 
be used. The only question that can in this connection 
be reasonably raised is, as to what does conform to this 
law. Here there is a Call for sound judgment, for scien- 
tific investigation and experiment, and the ripeness of 
large experience. 

A third principle is that whatever will help the healthy 
metal action of the patient should be studied and utilized. 
Things which otherwise might seem useless or injurious 
may thence be turned to good. Still, here, it is evident, 



58 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

there is a great need of discretion on the part of the 
physician. A false step, an ill-judged move may be 
fatal, or seem so, and subject him to serious censure. 
But by some means or power he must bring the mind of 
the patient into a healthy tone as a condition of healing 
the body ; and if he can do this by mind alone, all the 
better. 

A fourth principle is the co-operation of all the differ- 
ent classes of laws, and of those who are specialists in 
one or more of them. There is no reason why a Pneuma- 
topathist should not co-operate with one who is skilled 
and practised in any of the lines of organic phenomena, 
whether as physician or surgeon. If he is unsympa- 
thetic it will be less favorable. But that is only individ- 
ualistic, and effects not the principle of co-operation. 
This co-operation is often necessary. If the skilled 
Pneumatopathist is not scientifically educated in the 
physical line, it will be sometimes prudent and some- 
times necessary to have the services of one who is so 
educated and practised. While each of the various 
classes of laws has a sphere of its own, and so re- 
quires to be specially studied and observed, they all 
have a vital and mutual relation. They are constant 
co-operatives. So Pneumatopathists and physicists 
should unite where they are not united in the same 
person, especially where the case is serious and con- 
spicuously organic. But the thorough Pneumatopathist 
will never allow any other practitioner in the art of 
healing to be anything more than his assistant, or at the 
most, his associate. All sensible phenomena and action 
and prescription are subordinate to the supersensible. 
This should never be forgotten, and we should ordinarily 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 59 

refuse to act where this principle is not recognized. 
Metaphysics takes precedence of physics. It may use 
physics to some extent for metaphysical ends, and it 
should never allow itself to be used by physics for physi- 
cal ends. That would be degradation and perversion. 
Metaphysics should never even condescend to use its 
own powers merely for physical ends. It does seek and 
secure bodily well-being. But it does not stop there. 
Its object is the elevation of the mind, and through it 
the promotion of a perfect and all-rounded and immortal 
health of both the sensible and supersensible faculties 
as a unity of many spiritual forces. This is the dignity 
and glory of our science of Pneumatopathy. It presides 
over all things, and uses them as it sees proper for the 
attainment of its own supreme objects and results. 

Let the Pneumatopathist never forget his royal dignity. 
Let him never leave his throne, except in royal state. 
Let him always dwell in this supernal region, which is 
his native air. But let him be civil to all, never cringing 
nor truckling nor supercilious. To him belongs a sense 
of quiet and serene elevation of spirit and deportment, 
which, without effort or special emphasis, unconsciously 
affirms itself by its superior quality and force, and by 
the good it performs. Thus conceived, Pneumatopathy 
is destined to dwell a queen and be no widow, "for her 
Maker is her Husband." 



60 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

• GRADES OF LAWS. 

These different classes of laws are also of different 
grades, one ranking above and one below the other. 
The sensible ranks below the supersensible, as even the 
humblest mind readily discerns. 

From this there grows a law of relative subordination. 
Everything should be treated as it deserves, and every- 
thing deserves to be treated according to its value and 
worth. Now nothing is worth anything, except as and 
for thought and feeling, and these rise in dignity with 
their significance and intent. The external world is 
servant to the animal, and the animal to intelligence, and 
the highest end of this is the moral action and spiritual 
life in conscious and purposed harmony with his God and 
his creation. 

The intellectual and spiritual life then should rule 
the physical and organic life, and all the external world, 
and should rule them perfectly for the highest spirit- 
ual ends. The more easily, directly and completely it 
can do this the higher will be its grade of perfection. 
God can speak and it is clone, can command and it 
stands fast. We can do this in a small degree only, 
and for the most part we have to resort to sensible 
means for the attainment of supersensible and spiritual 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6 1 

issues. The author uses pen and paper to develope 
his own thought into more articulate fullness and 
clearness, and the press to instruct or stimulate the 
thought of others. Just in proportion as any of us can 
accomplish the higher ends of intelligence without the 
use of sensible processes, we do it, and we simplify the 
processes as far as possible. But so far as these proc- 
esses are necessary from the comparatively low grade of 
our own spiritual attainment, we are bound by every 
principle of reason to use with until all zeal and fidelity, 
and frankly acknowledge it. As food and sleep and rest 
are found to be necessary to our physical and organic 
welfare, we use them. If there is anything else which 
experience has proved in our case to be helpful or nec- 
essary, then that also ought to be used by us. Such use 
is not only a sensible or animal use, but a rational and 
religious use, because it is necessary to their proper 
exercise and development in our present condition and 
degree of progress. It is the handmaid of spirit, and 
spiritual in its object and ultimate issue, and so shares a 
spiritual dignity and sacredness. 

Further, according to the doctrine that all is mind, 
that all forms of sense are modes of mind, the difference 
between the classes of phenomena and laws is only a 
difference in the forms and grades of mental states or 
modes of mental action, and the use of anything what- 
ever is not the use of anything but mind, and cannot be, 
since there is'nt anything but mind to use or to be used. 
"All is mind." Sensible pnenomena are as really mind 
as supersensible phenomena, only of a lower rank, and 
to be used so far as necessary, and to be dispensed with 
when possible to our advantage, and not before. 



62 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Health is wholeness, the normal condition. Disease 
is unwholeness, disruption, derangement, partial dissolu- 
tion. Hence the supreme law of existence and life is 
health. But there are grades of health, as there are 
grades of life. There is the spiritual, the intellectual 
and the physical or animal ; and all these are the modes 
or subjective states of the perfect human being, and 
they are in such a man all in perfect harmony with each 
other. In case of a difference of claims, the superior in 
rank should rule the inferior, which has no function, 
except as the servant of the higher. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 63 



CHAPTER IX. 

NORMAL ACTION OF LAW. 

A distinction is commonly made between normal 
and abnormal conditions. This implies an idea of a state 
which is considered as the right and proper, or the nor- 
mal condition. This condition is conceived as one in 
which all the functions of the system are acting in full 
vigor and in harmonious co-operation. Whatever favors, 
fosters and coincides with this is, therefore, normal. 
There is a normal operation of the functions, and these 
functions can be kept in operation only by being fed and 
supplied by the materials which in their operation they 
consume. Hence the supply of these materials must be 
itself a normal process. Both body and mind need to be 
fed, and both demand a special kind of food. The body 
requires sensible food, and the mind requires supersensi- 
ble food, which, however, has usually to be conveyed by 
a sensible medium, and in both cases the process of 
suppy is a normal one. 

Now we can correct the errors of the mind only by 
mental medicine. According to the same law we should 
be supposed able to correct the errors of the body only 
by bodily correctives or physical medicine. This law, 
however, is limited in its operation, because it is subor- 
dinated to the higher law of the mind. This higher law 
controls the laws of the body to an indefinable extent. 



64 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATKY- 

Just how far and where it operates so that it directly 
affects the body for good (or evil) is to be determined 
only by experience. And where it fails, the law of the 
lower agency is to be brought into operation. 

We have thus a field both in health and disease for 
the action of both sets of laws, the sensible and super- 
sensible, relative to the body. We know that the direct 
action of the higher set of laws does not suffice for ail 
the wants of the body in either health or disease, and 
by a careful, patient, honest and persevering investiga- 
tion, we must find out the power of mind for the good 
of the body, and how this power can be promoted, and 
then by consequence, what are the needs of physical 
forms for physical needs, and use them accordingly. 
This only is " science," and it is not unchristian. 

These laws involve laws of healing. Because there is 
law everywhere, there is a law of healing. There are 
laws which may be followed for good or evil, and we 
know what we are doing and are responsible for it all. 

Then the mind of God is expressed in these laws, and 
that mind is good, and so all these laws are good. As 
goodness is their spirit and end, the same is true of their 
action when rightly understood and used. Hence, too, 
they must involve a healing agency, and that agency 
must in its higher ranges be mental, because supersen- 
sible laws are supreme, and to a large extent they directly 
control the sensible, and indirectly they control all other 
issues of the organic life. Here, pre-eminently, is the 
future line of progress. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6$ 



PAET FOURTH. 



PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO GOOD AND EVIL. 



CHAPTER X. 

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF EVIL. 

The origin of evil is virtually explained in the exposi- 
tions already given. It is a dark subject, and a detailed 
exposition no wise man will be very ready to offer. But 
there are some principles already indicated which afford 
all the light that is necessary for our guidance and in- 
struction ; and these principles are involved in the con- 
conception of a creature or a finite being. He must be 
liable to err, must make progress by experience, and the 
experience may be painful, and in some degree must be 
painful through the operation of error somewhere. But 
the result will be worth the pains, under an economy of 
infinite perfection, which contains this element of initial 
imperfection arising from the necessary nature of the 
finite. 

Further, the moral responsibility of the creature with 
a power of choosing according to principle, or according 



66 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

to opposing inclination, implies the possibility of another 
quality of evil and good, the voluntary and moral. The 
perverse action of the moral faculty is evil of a distinct 
kind — Sin. This is always and forever wholly and only 
and intrinsically evil. It is never a legitimate means of 
good. In the sense of sin, " we may not do evil that 
good may come." This evil can never be of God. For 
whatever the individual finite cannot and never could 
avoid or achieve is not their responsibility, and they are 
not thereby made morally either better or worse for that. 
And as everything which God has ordained is good in 
its end, there can be no moral evil except of the crea- 
ture's generation. This evil will be more or less over- 
ruled for good by God ; but otherwise it is evil pure and 
unmitigated, and nothing but evil can its perpetrator 
ever reap for it in the end. A short lived and inferior 
pleasure may and often is derived from it, and this is the 
temptation to the sin. But the ulterior result is and 
will be degradation and misery, shame and contempt. 
How they can act thus foolishly is an unanswerable 
question. This is the ultimate black wall of all moral 
investigation. The act of sin is irrational and can have 
no rational explanation. It is the only ulitmate absur- 
dity, and therefore we leave it as we must, in its native 
darkness. 

This again may partially explain the existence of in- 
voluntary pain, misery and comparative degradation. It 
has been claimed that, because man is the creature of 
infinite perfection, he must be perfectly immaculate 
and immutable. But that does not follow. It would be 
just as reasonable to infer his infinity from the infinity 
of his author. As we have seen that finity involves 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6? 

possible endless progress, this progress may be from error 
and evil into truth and good, and then from lower to 
higher degrees of truth and good. 

Both of these are necessary to the highest progress 
in good. The good is the end all along, because it is 
good. Therefore sound health and correct judgment are 
the normal state always, and always the will of God. 
Hence, it is always our duty as far as possible, to heal 
disease and dispel error. 

But it is very evident that in the present state of 
existence we cannot remove all suffering and disease and 
death. A thousand ills assail men which no care nor 
human foresight or skill can avert. Some we inherit, 
some visit us in the cradle, and some dog us all our life. 
Fire, flood and pestilence, tempests, cyclones and earth- 
quakes, are beyond the control of ordinary individual 
skill and power. They come in virtue of forces far be- 
yond our will and effort. What is their origin and cause? 

It has been said that God cannot be their cause, be- 
cause he can be only the author of good. Well, it is 
true that God can ultimately and in purpose be only 
the author of good. But he may be the author of seem- 
ing evil, if that is or may be helpful to the really good. 
Now the school which makes evil nothing but a seeming 
and illusion is the most strenuous in denying that God 
is its cause, and yet they allow that it is a means of 
good, and permitted for that reason and end. 

The truth is, that the evil which comes from a source 
beyond man, and is woven into his very nature, must 
have its origin ultimately in some good purpose of God, 
which purpose is best attained through means of the 
evil. It follows that such evil is only evil to the lower 



68 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

faculties, and good to the higher even now, and in the 
end good to all. Such evil is not really evil, but only 
seeming, it is "good in disguise," "good in the making." 
God therefore may reasonably be its author. 

Now a certain degree of apparent evil to our lower 
faculties is manifestly necessary to our wellfare, to our 
instruction, discipline and progress. It belongs appar- 
ently to the very nature of a finite being, that it must 
learn by degrees, and by experience and exercise de- 
velope wisdom and strength. We know no one can 
become physically strong, vigorous and healthy without 
exercise, and that implies effort in counteracting the re- 
action of opposing forces, and this work may be fatiguing 
and painful. If there is no error, and nothing calculated 
to mislead, if there is no possibility of mistake, because 
every thing bears a correct and unmistakable label on its 
face, then there is no call for intellectual circumspection, 
and for careful, earnest and patient investigation, with 
self -cautions against prejudice, misapprehension and 
false conclusions. In other words, the characteristic 
excellence of a trained and disciplined intellect, with all 
the moral worth it involves, is impossible without the 
necessity of prolonged contest with possible error and 
the disguises which it wears. 

In like manner suffering and trial, bereavement, dis- 
appointment, heavy burdens, great responsibilities and 
temptations have always proved or developed the heroes 
and heroines of the world, and made the world sparkle 
all over it with virtues which otherwise would never have 
become luminuous. Without temptation there could 
have been no pioof of virtue, and there could be no 
temptation, without in some way, a possible loss or suf- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 69 

fering through resistance to it. We must therefore con- 
ceide to the old divines and philosophers their claim that 
evil as it appears to sense enters into the divine plan of 
man and the world as a condition of ulterior and higher 
good. This has also been the conviction of the most 
pure and nobly devout saints of all the ages. 



yO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XL 

REALITY OF EVIL AND OF TRANSIENT GOOD. 

Now we are pressed with a new question concerning 
the nature of evil, a question which has recently risen 
into unprecedented importance. Is it a reality, an illu- 
sion or an absolute nothing? These are questions which 
have been answered with equal confidence and incompre- 
hension in these days. 

What is reality, is one of the questions involved in 
these answers. The eternal is real, it is answered. The 
temporal is just the opposite of the eternal, and there- 
fore the temporal is unreal. There is no real existence 
but the eternal. Affirm the reality of the Infinite, and 
the existence of the finite, being the opposite of this 
real, is proved to have no existence at all. In like man- 
ner it is affirmed that God is real as good, true, intelligent 
and powerful and as real substance ; and as evil, sin and 
error are the opposite of this real, they are unreal, have 
no existence. With this superficial conceit and imposi- 
tion of an empty verbal logic many are satisfied and are 
suddenly transmuted thereby into magic healers of the 
world's maladies. It is no use to tell such people that 
the opposite of eternal, of infinite, of good and of truth, is 
not unreality, but respectively temporal, finite, bad and 
false ; and that the latter class may exist as well as the 
former. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. J\ 

To others, however, it will be well to point out this 
fact more distinctly. The argument assumes that oppo- 
sites and contraries do not exist, that nothing exists 
except what is concordant and harmonious. This con- 
tradicts facts. Else I should now have no folly to expose, 
no error to refute, and no one could have any objection 
to anything I can say. Logic and reason could have no 
vocation, if there were nothing and could be nothing to 
reason against. 

If opposites do not exist there is then either no infinite 
reality, or there is no finite reality. One or the other 
must be discarded. The finite cannot be denied because 
it is a distinct and constant element of our conscious 
experience. We feel our limitations every moment in 
every direction. Relative to each other and to forces 
outside of our organism, and relative to the tasks of our 
daily life, we have to be frequently engaged in measur- 
ing the limited degree of our power and knowledge. 
We must therefore conclude there is no Infinite, and be 
atheists, if the opposites, finite and Infinite, cannot both 
exist. But as theists we must affirm both. 

If these opposites may co-exist, the principle in ques- 
tion is destroyed, and other opposites may co-exist — such 
as good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, truth and 
error, veracity and hypocrisy. This is not only a logical 
possibility, but it is a fact so constant and universal and 
so obvious to all, that I question whether any one has 
ever been able to so impose on himself, and from earthly 
motives or otherwise, to so pervert his mental action as 
to become really pursuaded of the nonexistence of evil, 
error, sickness and sin. 

The oft-quoted declaration of James, that sweet and 



72 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

bitter waters cannot come from the same fountain, im- 
plies the existence of both sweet and bitter waters, 
wherever they originate. It may be true, as he says, that 
" no fountain yields both salt water and fresh." That, 
however, is quite possible ; and it is an ascertained fact, 
that from the same orifice in the earth very different 
fluids have come at different times, such as pure water, 
impure water, gas, pitch, oil, flame, vapor, cold water, 
scalding water. But whatever may be allowed or disal- 
lowed concerning these fountains, there can be no reason 
able doubt about the fountain of the human soul. Here 
James expressly affirms the very contrary of what is attrib- 
uted to him. Because of his figure of the fountain he 
is quoted as designing to say that the two opposites can- 
not come from the human heart. But he says men are 
here unlike the fountain. Hear him. He says : " The 
tongue no man can tame, an unruly evil, full of deadly 
poison. Therewith bless me God, even the Father ; and, 
therewith curse we men, which are made after the simil- 
itude of God. Out of the same month proceedeth bless- 
ing and cursing. My bretheren, these things ought not 
so to be." He says these things are so, but ought not to 
be so. James himself in the same letter curses wicked 
oppressive tyrants, and blesses the honest and faithful 
poor. He does this as a good and just man. Goodness 
and Justice forever smile on the right and frown on the 
wrong. In proportion to the vigor of their blessing for 
the one is the energy of their curse for the other. This 
is an ultimate moral necessity. James meant only to 
rebuke the impious cant which fawns on God, and shows 
no brotherhood to man, blessing God and cursing man, 
which ought not to be. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 73 

On the same erroneous interpretation and presupposi- 
tion they say that from God can come only good. Evil 
can never be a part of his plan or the result of his action. 
It is a shallow, petty conceit. Evil be to him that evil 
thinks. If God's design is good, and if he sees, as he 
must, that the ultimate result will be just what he 
approves, as infinitely wise and good, then it is all good 
so far as it concerns his action, notwithstanding the 
" growing pains " which his creatures feel for a season 
as a condition of higher and immortal good. 

There is a popular and qualified sense in which we say 
that error and evil are unreal, and that only the true and 
good are real. This however, is not meant to be ulti- 
mate and metaphysical. In a broad sense we may say, 
with much practical truth, that the real is the good and 
true. 

This has been a suggested thought of the ages ; but 
it has never become a formulated dogma of Church or 
Council. Augustine refused to allow to error, evil or 
sin any proper reality. He affirmed that it was only the 
absence of good, or the effect of such absence. Many 
theologians, who have held to the "Augustinian doctrine 
of grace," have also held this notion. They make all 
evil and sin to be only the absence, or the effect of the 
absence, of the divine power and grace ; and they are 
happy in the thought that by this means they give all 
glory of all good to God. 

But Christian Pneumatopathy does not, like those old 
teachers, saddle God with responsibility for a serious and 
awful negative. It sees into the question more clearly 
and profoundly, and makes its affirmations with corre- 
sponding precision and firmness. It does not teach, as 



74 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

they do, that God withholds a possible and needed grace, 
or favor, or spiritual power, and by so doing necessitates 
sin, and all forms and degrees of error and evil. It does 
not consider that this gives any glory to God, but that 
it blots him with all the darkness consequent on his 
illiberality. Such a being is not God. God is infinite 
good, and he is, and does, everything good ; and he with- 
holds nothing necessary to the perfection of his creatures 
after their kind. But how shall we determine what is 
good ? I answer : By the law of harmony. It must be 
found to be in harmony with all other known and indis- 
putable good. All truth, all true art, all right action, 
exemplify this harmony, which is generically the har- 
mony of pure love, which comprehends all harmonies, 
and without which all minor harmonies are an ultimate 
discord. 

Thoughts, when they are in harmony with eternal 
Truth and Reality, are good, though they are transient. 
They are the transient modes in which the eternal Real- 
ity is manifest, by which the Idea of God shows its own 
character, and thence the divine character, and reflects 
him as his image. A similar exposition applies with 
perfect rigor to the harmonious and beneficent phenom- 
ena of the visible world in relation to their subject. 
These phenomena are never anything else or more than 
subjective states, modes and forms of consciousness. 
So conceive them, deny to them any existence other 
than that, deny to them any substance or life or intelli- 
gence other than Spirit, then you affirm them as Spirit, 
then you affirm them as spiritual facts, and as such they 
are not to be put in the catalogue of error, and your 
conception of them is not error, but truth ; and your use 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 75 

of them in this light is not evil, but good ; for all through 
there is perfect harmony both of thought and action, and 
all must be in harmony with eternal Love. Let it, how- 
ever, be remembered, that we have said this only of the 
good as that which is spiritually harmonious. All dis- 
cordant elements, whether of sense, or passion, or more 
refined thought, are to be considered as excluded from 
this catalogue of truth and good. By their very nature, 
as discordant, they are excluded from the circle of har- 
mony, and therefore from the circle of the Good and 
True. They are a false thought, a deceiver and a cheat. 
And therefore they are destroyed by correct thought. 

This error and discord, and their action, constitute the 
mortal man and mortal thought ; and nothing else is 
mortal. Nothing that is good or true can be mortal. It 
belongs to the eternal real. It is a part of the necessary 
harmony of infinity. 

It is true that each of these successive forms cannot 
be eternal ; but their Substance, and Spirit, and Life, and 
Intelligence can be, and are so. These forms, so far as 
they are good and spiritually harmonious, are the modes 
of thoughts, the transient subjective states, of the im- 
mortal man, whose very Life and Soul and Being are God. 
As the beautiful azure and vermillion transparencies 
appear in succession on the surface of the water, and 
then speedily melt into the common mass, which remains 
the same through all the history of its bubble evolutions, 
so the various successive thoughts and phenomena of 
spiritual life rise and fall in the small sea of the 
human mind; and these rise nevermore to fall, on the 
bosom of the Ocean of Infinite Mind. Changless Mind 
is thus eternally generating immortal reflectors of itself ; 



?6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

and these are ever generating reflectors of themselves in 
the invisible world of supersensible consciousness, and 
also in the visible world of beauty, loveliness and good- 
ness ; and this visible excellence is a symbol of the invis- 
ible and supersensible. 

Thus conceived, we can see how "the heavens declare 
his glory, and the firmament showeth his handiwork," 
that "day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
showeth knowledge." Thus all that is truly fair and 
good is rescued from mean aspertions, and honored as 
the mirrored excellence, though inadequate, of the Infin- 
itely Fair and Good. 

Sin is a peculiar modification of evil. It begins with 
volition, but it generates false and painful and injurious 
conditions of body and mind. These bad conditions are 
not removed by the mere understanding of them, as 
abnormal and real, as having no base in the essential 
principle of right and truth and wisdom. Many sinners 
see and acknowledge all this and see it very clearly, 
and still continue in their sin. The laws of victory 
over sin we cannot here stay to expound. We only 
observe in passing through this stage of our investiga- 
tion, that a mere understanding of its normal falsity 
and economic unreality does not necessarily suffice for 
its destruction. Other potent factors are eqally nec- 
essary. 

There is such an experience as illusion, as we are all 
well aware. The illusive is always said to be unreal. 
What is the nature of this unreality ? It is simply a false 
action ot sense or reason. A man with the jaundice is 
said to see all things yellow. They may be yellow to his 
sense. That is a real experience. But if he thence 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. JJ 

infers that all other people have the same sense as him- 
self, his inference will be false, will not answer to the 
reality. But while it is untrue and in that sense unreal, 
it is still a fact as a state and action of his own mind. 
It is simply unreal in that it has no foundation in the 
actual world of experience beyond his own notion. A 
disordered condition of the stomach and nerves is a 
source of many false sensations, which have no reality 
beyond their one conscious subject. My father once said 
that on going to his work at one period he saw huge 
sacks of wool roll before him on his way, but always 
keeping out of his reach, and that they were as clear and 
distinct as any other of the objects of vision. But he 
knew they were unreal, as we all thus pronounce them. 
But how unreal ? They were not unreal as subjective 
states as visual phenomena, for that kind of reality is 
just what he affirmed, and this kind of reality constituted 
the point of note and importance. They were unreal 
only in that they did not conform to a law of universal 
experience. They had no foundation in the universal 
economy of nature. They did not respond to the action 
of the other senses nor to the usual action of sight or to 
the senses of other men. He had never seen sacks of 
wool rolled without seeing some hands or other forces 
which rolled them. He concluded they were unreal. 
This is the kind of unreality which belongs to all error, 
falsehood, evil and sin. It is contrary to the fundamental 
and eternal order of things. It has no vital root pene- 
trating into eternal principles. It is a baseless fabrica- 
cation. It is therefore destined to pass away ; and its 
power will perish as fast as its false and baseless nature 
is discerned. We kill error therefore by the exercise of 



?8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

intelligence and the progress of knowledge and under- 
standing. But we have something to kill, a false mental 
state and action, which as such is a reality for the time 
being. 

Disease is not to be confounded with intellectual error 
or with sensible illusion. It is like them in part, but with 
a difference of great importance. Disease is not, like 
intellectual error, always dispelled by the understanding 
of it as abnormal and so far unreal. It may have had 
such an origin and have gained such a hold, both in rela- 
tion to its subject and others, and it may have such a 
spiritual mission to fulfil, that in these respects it passes 
alike our power and comprehension, and though we know 
that it is unreal in that it is not the expression of the 
supreme eternal law and end of God's economy, we also 
often find that this understanding does not destroy it as 
a painful and debilitating subjective state. 

Some are very strenuous and seriously concerned about 
our interfering with God's work. If disease or any form 
of evil, they argue, is any part of the divine plan, why 
should we attempt to interfere with it ? Such a thing 
would be useless and presumptuous. This has quite a 
pious look, urged by some who are probably atheists, and 
urged with an air which quite imposes on some good and 
honest minds which have become fascinated and psychol- 
ogized by a verbal puzzle. 

Suppose we ask these wordy dialecticians who or what 
they are interfering with in their healing work ? Is it the 
devil's plan ? No ! for there is no devil, they say. Is it 
man's plan and work ? No ! for man cannot create, they 
say, and they say the same of all finite beings. Then 
the only other alternative is that it must be God's plan 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 79 

and work they are modifying. To say further that the 
disease they cure is nothing at all, as they do, is perhaps 
often true. Here we are willing to let them testify for 
themselves. 

As to the alleged impossibility of succeeding in the 
attempt to undo or modify the work of God, the object- 
ion is very unobservant of the most familiar and every- 
day facts of all life and action. It is a part of God's plan 
that his creation shall be indefinitely modified by man. 
Nothing could be more irrational than to say that the 
universe is in every detail to be left untouched, un- 
wrought upon, unmodified by the hand of man, that it is 
no field for the exercise of his genius, industry and 
powers. For that is its supreme office and end. Man 
exists only by thus interfering in the creation of God, 
directing its forces into new channels, molding its objects 
into new forms, and securing thereby ever fresh results. 
Whatever ministers to human life, to its comforts and 
luxuries and elegancies, and to intellectual elevation, 
whatever marks the mental status of man or the relative 
advances of science or philosophy, or social or industrial 
advantages, is the result of man's interference with the 
creation of God, modifying its agency for the better. We 
bottle the lightning, and then let it shoot into illumina- 
nation, or turn our mill wheels at need. We guide the 
rivers, if not the stars in their courses ; and we make 
separated oceans kiss each other by the opened lips of our 
ship canals. The scattered springs on a distant hill-side 
soddening its soil and spreading into a miasmatic marsh 
on the lowlands, we collect together in a grand reservoir 
and send through the long aqueduct down to the distant 
city, which otherwise could never have grown into its 



80 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

mighty proportions. We have recently turned sun, moon 
and stars and even the forked lightning into unparalelled 
artists in the service of science, and made them do what 
human artists cannot do so faithfully, paint their own 
portraits. Starry worlds all show us how much like they 
are to our own earth, and acknowledge the bond of a 
near kinship. All these and myriads of other achieve- 
ments are both cause and effect of monifying the facts 
and phenomena of nature, of the world of God's creation. 
The only presumption here is that we are right in this 
interference. It is manifestly the order of God and the 
law of our existence. This covers both good and evil, 
health and disease. 

In interfering with God's creation we do not neces- 
sarily interfere with God's plans of creation. It is part 
of his plan that man and all creation shall interfere. 
Darwin has elaborately shown how the earth-worm has 
for countless ages been interfering with the surface of 
the earth, and by boring and disturbing and eating and 
excreting, enriching it and adding to its beauty and the 
comfort and wealth of man. The tiny coral builds 
islands and extends continents. All forms of life are 
ever changing the forms and actions of the inanimate 
world, and man follows in their wake, and operates with 
a higher form of power, and with self-conscious design 
and moral purpose, earring out in his own way, like all 
inferior creatures, the all-comprehending plan of God. 

It should be borne in mind that in modifying the phe- 
nomena of nature we do not go against her laws. We 
change the facts and forms of the processes of creation, 
but not the laws which govern them. In fact, it is only 
in accordance with these that we effect these changes. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 8 1 

We use the recognized laws in our effort to effect the 
changes we desire, and it is in the laws and their normal 
use that we see what is the plan of God, and work with it 
in effecting changes in the created product. In effect- 
ing these changes "we are workers together with God," 
instead of being workers against God. 

All things are made on purpose that they may be 
changed. Nothing that is created is immutable. As 
created, everything had a beginning. Its existence is 
contingent on the creative will of God. The nature and 
form of its existence are therefore subject to the same 
contingency. They are therefore possibly subject or 
liable to mutation. Only the eternal and uncreated are 
immutable. All created things are not only intrinsically 
mutable, but it is the manifest design of the Creator that 
they shall be changed. He has stamped them all with 
certain laws of transmutation. The most permanent of 
known things are always changing. The everlasting 
hills are wearing away, and they may crumble till they 
are washed in the ocean, and other mountains may take 
their place there or elsewhere. All organic life, vege- 
table or animal is subject to ceaseless transformation in 
birth, progress, wear and decay. The noblest and most 
enduring of all, the human spirit, is subject to change in 
the forms and relative rank of the forms of its con- 
sciousness. 

God made man for action. That is the very essence 
of all reality. What is the good of power never used ? 
What is the evidence of its existence except by its exer- 
cise and the results it attains ? Indeed, power can- 
not be still. Jesus felt this when he said : " My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work." Indolence and inaction 



82 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

are weakness, degradation. God's world is God's vine- 
yard, and he enjoins all men to go and work in it. " Do 
with thy might whatsoever thine hands find to do." 

All action is itself a change and a cause of further 
change. It is a source of changes in ourselves and in 
all things on which and by which we work, and in all 
things to which they and we are related. 

It is the manifest design of God that all mutations 
should be in the line of progress, of improvement of 
previous conditions. His own works are designed uni- 
versally to be improved by man. At first sight this 
proposition seems wonderful and strange. From the 
perfection of God we might argue, a priori, the immut- 
able perfection of all his works. Some have done this, 
and have thence affirmed, with infinite dogmatic iteration 
the eternal immutable perfection of man and the uni- 
verse, and that all seeming ill is only seeming, a pure 
delusion. But how the delusion which is an evil, can 
obtain where everything is thus absolutely perfect they 
cannot explain ; yet they hold to their dogma all the more 
tightly, reckless alike of logical consistency and common 
sense. 

If we are determined to use the a priori argument, we 
ought to take into consideration all the elements from 
which the deduction is to be drawn. We should consider 
the essential and necessary elements of a creature and 
especially of an intelligent and responsible creature. 
Certainly the creature must be of some kind and degree 
of force and power, and so capable of action, of produc- 
ing definite effects, and so there must be a theatre of 
action, a field of labor, a world subject by regular law to 
the action of intelligent purpose. Intelligence will want 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 83 

to do something worth doing, and where and so far as it 
cannot improve things it will let them alone. The only 
motive for action is some attainable good, some advantage 
which the change thus effected brings. From the very- 
nature of man and the universe, therefore, it follows that 
the creation must be improvable, and man have the power 
and the responsibility of improving it. 

The universe is perfect so far as it affords the best field 
of work. It can have no other. Its perfection is always 
relative to its end. Absolute and immutable perfection 
is impossible to the finite. It must be forever capable 
of being better, everlastingly susceptible of improve- 
ment, subjectively and objectively. However much a 
creature knows, there remains an unknown for him to 
conquer and explore. However great his power, it has 
limits which he may outgrow, and which by the law of 
his being it seems that he must outgrow as a necessary 
consequence of the exercise of his faculties. And as a 
being of moral responsibility, he is bound to use his 
powers in the best way, which again implies a sphere of 
action and of endless possible improvement, as an essen- 
tial element of a perfect creation. 



84 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CREATION OF EVIL. 

It has been argued that as creatures are not creators, 
they cannot create evil, and that as God would not, there 
is in reality no such thing as evil. Such apparent argu- 
ment is an emphatic unreality, a mere seeming, an illusive 
use of words in the place of thoughts. We are all famil- 
iar enough with evil, whether created by God or man or 
neither. We accept the facts of consciousness. Evil 
may be illusive, as no doubt it is, especially with some 
minds in the formulation of such false verbal logic as that 
we are refuting. But it can be illusive only so far as it 
has an existence in thought and belief, that is, as a state 
of mind, which generates other mental states in various 
forms of action and passion. This mental existence is 
the only existence there is according to the theory in 
question, since it denies the existence of matter and 
affirms that all is mind. Therefore to admit a " claim 
to existence" or a "belief of reality," is to admit the 
reality as a mental state, and as nothing has any other 
reality, it is to admit that it has reality in the full and 
proper sense, for the time being. 

Error, evil and sin are not direct creations, but the 
abnormal and perverse action of force already created. 
It is no creation to use bad logic, to ignore or falsify 
facts. It is only a perversion of power, which could be, 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 85 

and ought to be, better employed. If I put my hand 
under a moving trip-hammer, I do not create anything. 
I only subject myself to the painful operation of forces 
which before were known to exist, and which were known 
to be of great service to mankind ; and a moral trip- 
hammer will, sooner or later fall on all wrong doers, not 
because of any new creation, but in virtue of the law by 
which the mills of God are always working, and finally 
grind very fine their grist. 

The conscious conflict which one feels in his breast is 
in some degree painful, and in that sense evil, but in a 
moral being under probation it is necessary to perfection 
of moral character and its peculiar glory and felicity. 

God is eternally immutable. Nothing can have any 
power to determine his action, because he is eternally 
self-determined, as the only eternal Being. 

Now it is necessarily otherwise with all his creatures, 
which are finite and temporal. Whatever their powers 
and proclivities, they receive them from him. If these 
powers act in all cases from the necessity of their nature, 
so that no other action in the same condition and con- 
nections is possible, then all their actions as well as all 
their powers proceed from God. In that case they have 
no character of their own, of their own making. It is 
of God's making. God is only responsible and must 
receive exclusively the honor or the apparent dishonor. 
This is allowed to be the state of the case with all the 
inanimate world, and with the brute irrational creation of 
animals. They are supposed to have no self-made moral 
character. 

The rational and moral world are not thus necessitated. 
They possess peculiar powers and freedom of choice and 



86 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

responsibility; and they generate a character of their own 
choosing, which may be good or bad. This is attested 
by consciousness, and it is implied in our moral judg- 
ments concerning ourselves and others ; and all literature 
is full of its implications. 

This implies conflicting attractions, so that there may 
be a possibility of choosing between them. If only one 
course is possible, there is no sphere for choice. If an 
apple and an orange are presented to me, and I am told 
to take my choice between them, the proposition is intel- 
ligible. But if only one thing is presented, whether 
apple or orange or aught else, and I am told to make my 
choice, I listen only to empty words. I may then indeed 
choose to accept or reject the one thing offered. Then 
there is a sphere and act of choice, one volition where 
the opposite is possible. 

This was the case with Eve. She had the power to 
eat or not eat of the fruit forbidden. She had also an 
attraction for the fruit, else the prohibition would have 
been superfluous. If no one wanted to drink, we should 
need no prohibitory liquor laws. Eve therefore had a 
natural proclivity for the fruit, and this before she sinned ; 
and this was a condition of moral choice, because she 
was thus required to choose between this and God's 
command. 

However we interpret this ancient story otherwise, it 
expresses the soul of moral action, its conditions and 
issues — a free choice between two opposing claims or 
attractions on the score of right and wrong. Eve, too, 
is here conceived as having a confliction between desire 
and conscience before she has formed by choice her 
moral character. It is so with all. The sense of sub- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Sy 

jective confliction between desire and duty is therefore 
not the effect of a moral fall, either of the race or indi- 
vidual, but the pre-condition of any moral action, good 
or evil. 

This confliction is a sort of evil, a painful feeling for a 
season, yet absolutely necessary to moral choice and all 
the noblest issues of the moral and spiritual life. What 
is true of this subjective conflict and evil, is equally true 
of the conflict and consequent trouble with which objec- 
tive experiences are fraught. Indeed, these also are sub- 
jective states just as much as the other. All phenomena 
are subjective states, and all their conflictions are a 
theatre for the exercise of our highest powers, especially 
the moral. In this sense God is the author of evil — an 
evil which is sub-moral and pre-moral, and a condition of 
moral good or moral evil. Used wrongly, it becomes 
real and unalloyed evil. Used aright, it becomes shaped 
and moulded into the good, and blends as a strengthen- 
ing element in one harmonious character which is the 
object or final cause of its creation. 

In estimating the nature and extent of evil, we need to 
make quite sure that we look at things from the right 
mental position. We should never forget that there are 
two contrasted standpoints — that of sensibility, and that 
of moral intelligence. What is good to one of these is 
often evil to the other. Sense cries out in pain as suffer- 
ing serious evil, when moral intelligence perceives it as 
good, because of being the necessary means of a nobler, 
richer and more enduring felicity. If this is the purpose 
and destined issue of all painful sensibility, as every true 
Theist must believe, then all pain is in the best and high- 
est sense, truly good, and worthy of God. If the finite 



88 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

mind can be most greatly blessed only by passing through 
such experiences, then the Infinite Good must ordain 
them for this end. 

A little reflection will further disclose to us that all 
things are fountains of both good and evil according to 
their connections in action. The most beautiful and 
beneficent of all sensible things are fearfully evil in some 
connections. This is true even of the sunlight, the very 
glory and life of the universe. It often kills men and 
dries up the earth. The rain from heaven, from the 
good Father, and so necessary to all, may spread exten- 
sive desolation, devouring and overwhelming, till itself 
remains alone a mere wide waste of waters, where teem- 
ing populations and all their products of industry, taste 
and genius, unfolded their busy life and animating 
interest. All forces operate uniformly, as they must, 
because they are what they are ; and, therefore, as they 
operate the same always in the same or similar relations, 
they must operate differently in different relations. 
There is nothing, and can be nothing, which operates 
pleasantly in one class of relations and degrees, but it 
may operate painfully and injuriously in other degrees 
and relations. No thing, therefore, is absolutely good or 
evil in itself, but only in relation to other things and the 
ulterior moral ends which moral intelligence must always 
have in view. It is in this light that everything which God 
has made is good, the heavens and earth and all that is 
therein. All the so-called evil is incidental and a means 
of ulterior good, and even the good as a mere unthink- 
ing and non-moral sensibility is an incidental good, a 
means to a higher good. Thus even in so-called evil 
God doeth all things well. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 89 



CHAPTER XIII. 

NO ROOM FOR EVIL AND GOD. 

We have a fresh reason in our present train of reflec- 
tion and argumentation for rejecting the doctrine that 
evil is an absolute unreality. Evil in me is a wrong state 
of my mind. It has no other existence. But this exist- 
ence it has. This, however, is just the kind of existence 
which belongs to good, whether finite or infinite. Good 
exists simply and solely as a state of the mind of God or 
of his creature. 

This is an oft-repeated argument against the existence 
of evil (what a power of happy illusion to doubt it) to 
the effect that since God is good and omnipresent, this 
precludes the possibility of evil, because there is no 
room for it. If God occupied space literally, and if the 
same were true of all evil, this argument would be con- 
clusive. 

But in the first place, God does not occupy space, 
since he is not a sensible object. Nothing but sensible 
objects occupy space. This book as a sensible phenom- 
enon occupies spaces, which are of measurable dimens- 
ions, and to that extent exactly, it excludes every other 
sensible thing, from the space it occupies. This is the 
only way, the way of sense, that we know of space being 
exclusively occupied, and not in this way is space filled 



90 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

by God, else there would be no room for this book or 
other sensible objects, or for anything else which occu- 
pies space, and if our souls occupy space there would be 
no room for them. But there is room for souls and 
for thoughts and feelings ; and so there is room for evil 
thoughts and feelings which occupy no more space than 
good ones. The fact is, that, so far as we know, spirit 
is not extended at all in the sense of being a space- 
filling substance, and in no such gross materialistic sense 
as this does God fill the immensity of space. It is also 
certain that space is not full. It is comparatively empty, 
because its contents could be brought indefinitely closer 
together, so that infinitely more might be pushed in. 
Plenty of room for a few small souls and their errors, 
miseries and sins. 

Further, if God fills all space so that there is no room 
for evil, that must be because there is no room for any- 
thing, which of course, must be the case if God fills all 
space. Then whatever we do actually find in space is 
God, however base or bad it seem. All the monstrous 
shapes, motions, processes, doing, and forms, which are 
found in space are God. Thus we have a most repulsive 
and horrid pantheism as logically involved in such an 
argument. That such a thing should be put forth and 
widely accepted in the name of Christianity and science 
only proves of very many people that they know neither. 

In order to heal it is not necessary to deny the facts 
of experience, as some have taught. The unpalatable 
fact has to be recognized and then changed. We deny not 
the existence of evil, but the right of the fact, and so we 
bring truth and right and all their power to bear upon the 
abnormal fact for its extension and destruction. It is an 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 91 

unlawful obtruder. It is not an intrinsic good. At the 
most it can be allowed only a temporary existence. It is 
out of harmony with the supreme and eternal law of 
being. It is but the disturbing ghost of the abiding and 
substantial reality, and it is to be put down by our con- 
formity with the eternal law. 



92 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FEAR AS A SOURCE OF EVIL. 

Fear is the source of much and serious evil. It con- 
jures up a world of chimeras. It paralyzes the powers 
of men. It turns friends into foes, and good into evil. 
It spreads a pall of darkness and horrors on the sunniest 
of landscapes. It turns promises into threatnings and 
co-operation into opposition. There is no possible advan- 
tage or favoring circumstance and opportunity which it 
will not transmute into some dire misfortune. Fear is 
the night-mare of our waking thoughts. By imagining 
evils and wrongs of every description, it prompts to cor- 
responding wrong under the plea of necessity and self- 
defense. The fear of poverty and dependence, the fear 
of being cut and despised by old associates, the fear of 
sinking in the social scale, the fear of being outdone by 
others, lead to extortion, falsehood, fraud, cruelty and 
diabolical crimes. Fear has made brave men as well as 
cowards "turn back in the day of battle," and slain more 
armies than the sword. It fills the hospitals of the 
armies with crest-fallen characters and thence diseased 
and debilitated bodies, which are soon turned to corpses. 
Fear generates universally an unhealthy mental atmos- 
phere, and unrest and strife and discontent, and various 
forms of derangement of body and mind, and death 
is often the consequence. Fear is oppressing all the 



CHRISTIAN t>NEUMATOPATH¥ k 93 

great nations of Europe with standing armies, and with 
taxes, which eat up all their substance, and divert their 
genius and energies to unproductive labor, lest one nation 
will be found at the unguarded throat of another. Fear 
is the Cerberus who, under the pretext of guarding the 
gates of hell, opens them wide and pushes men within, 
and worries them incessantly, and scarce knows the evil 
it performs. 

It was wisely said by Montaigne : "The thing in the 
world I am most afraid of is Fear, and with good reason, 
that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all 
other accidents." We may say truthfully, with one of 
Shakespeare's characters: "I find the people strangely 
fantasied ; possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams, 
not knowing what they fear, but full of Fear." No one 
of the known evils of our conscious life is equal prob- 
ably in baleful potency to the passion of Fear. It often 
kills at a stroke and oftener generates a long and linger- 
ing death. Savage men lived in constant fear of savage 
beasts, and civilized man lives in sleepless fear of his 
fellows, and by fear creates in every atom and in every 
point of space some hostile power. Moral courage is a 
prime and pre-eminent virtue, and in the older portions 
of the world it tends to dwindle and decay. Falsehood 
and treachery we have seen spread and strike like a 
pestilence, through fear of financial disadvantage. We 
have seen this fear band together small knots of people, 
who otherwise would have been respectable, in support 
of a tissue of known lies, and do it under the shelter of 
the most sacred names. In their destitution of moral 
courage and consequent depression of moral principle, 
they have well-nigh exemplified the dogma that fear is 



94 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

the source of every evil, and with great rapidity they 
propagate their fear. 

But fear is not the only and exclusive power for evil. 
The sources of evil are at least as numerous as the fac- 
ulties of man, for these faculties are all liable to error 
and perversion, and that is the nature and source of evil. 
The very opposite of fear — courage and fearlessness — 
may be a source of evil. This is constantly exemplified in 
children. They are ever reckless of danger, and from this 
they have to be constantly watched, lest they do or incur 
some serious or fatal harm. They will grasp at flames 
or razor edges. They will readily drink any deadly 
thing, or play with the most dangerous reptiles, or dance 
fearless on the precipice or within the reach of the in- 
coming tide. As a rule, healthy children know no fear, 
or very little. They learn fear only from experience, and 
so their fear is the effect, instead of being the cause, of 
their painful experiences. After experience has taught 
them a salutory circumspection, they are apt to carry it 
too far, to fear and suspect everything and everybody, 
and thence at second hand an excessive and ill-directed 
fear becomes unhealthy, unhappy and injurious. What 
should have been a prudent caution becomes a putative 
slanderer of all good, and a creeping and cruel coward, 
a snake in the grass, an assassin in the dark. 

The cause of disease and human misery goes far 
deeper than fear, conscious or unconscious. We may 
ask, What causes fear ? Whence comes it and why ? It 
is very noticeable how so obvious a question has been 
kept out of sight. We have just mentioned one cause 
— involuntary and inevitable experience. I believe 
science knows no other. There are inherited tendences 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 95 

to fear. These are explicible and quite well verefiable as 
the transmitted effects of ancestral experience. Here, 
then, is universally and entirely the effect, and not the 
cause of known evil. We must, therefore, find some 
other explanation of the origin of evil. 

Hence the great value of courage and the importance 
of its cultivation. It is the brave who are the heroes 
and leaders of the world. Men must dare to be, to 
assert and develope into fullest expression and power 
their better selves. Without this Jesus and Paul would 
have been unknown. This made " Peter the prince of 
the Apostles." Christianity inculcates meekness and 
long-suffering ; but this is to be made manifest in earn- 
est and fearless expression, and the maintainance and 
propagation of the true and the right and good. This 
is why the martyrs suffered ; and all the suffering con- 
fessors and reformers have followed in the same track. 

Such men are still needed. 

Evil has but one explanation — unity, as given before, 
and that explanation is ultimate and final. The finite, 
the limited, is liable to error and perversion. This event- 
ustes in discord and connection of forces, in storms and 
tempests, convulsions and earthquakes and opposing 
passions, interests, thoughts and purposes. Hence, the 
only and the ultimate and supreme remedy is the cor- 
rection of error, and the rational and scientific connec- 
tion and co-ordination of the finite and infinite. To 
promote and teach the method and effect of attaining 
this is the object of Christian Pneumatopathy. 



g6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XV. 

A PRIORI THEOLOGY. 

After the a priori method of the Medieval schoolmen 
some have formulated a very artificial theory of the 
universe. Affirming that all God's work must be like 
himself, immutably perfect, it must say this of man; 
and so man's work must all be perfect. Therefore error, 
evil, sin, have no existence whatever, because neither 
God nor his creature could produce such a thing. Noth- 
ing could be more logical from its assumed premise than 
this conclusion, and nothing could be more contrary to 
known fact, and to every notion of healing. 

It is not best to be very positive and dogmatic in de- 
tailed deductions from the assumed infinite perfection of 
God. It is very easy here to go astray. Errors in this 
line in the history of theological thought are very numer- 
ous, and some of them are thoroughly monstrous. In 
fact, they constitute the main staple of the worst features 
of the old orthodoxies. Assuming that God's creation 
must be perfect at the start, they give us a land of Eden 
and a first pair of very verdant innocence. Then to ex- 
plain the course of human sin and misery, they make 
this pair to sin and transmit their degenerate character 
to the whole human race. To remedy this great fiasco, 
the deductive theologians invent the doctrine of atone- 
ment. God is too good to be indifferent to human 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHV. 97 

misery and sin, but he is too just to disregard the claims 
of his law. Therefore, to satisfy both love and law he 
becomes incarnate, and by special suffering for them 
he is enabled to be a just God and a Saviour. All do 
not hear or accept the offer of mercy thus made. But 
God cannot be disappointed, and therefore he must have 
designed and ordained this, and indeed he has from 
all eternity ordained the original Fall and whatsoever 
comes to pass. This is orthodoxy and Calvinism, and it 
is a rigid deduction from certain assumptions as to the 
nature and attributes of God as a Being of infinite per- 
fection. 

In the same way they oppose not only the evolution 
of man from lower forms of life, but they oppose all 
progress. God's ideas, it is said, must be immutable; 
and as man is an effect and expression of the divine idea, 
he must be immutable. But that would surely prove too 
much. It would prove that there cannot be either pro- 
gress or decay in all the universe, and so everything is 
at an absolute and eternal stand-still. Evolution is but 
a form of creature progress, and if it is allowed in any 
forms and degrees whatever, it may be allowed in this. 
It must be allowed in some degree, and that as a very 
prime law of finite life, and we know not that it is im- 
possible in the form of evolution. 



98 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
god's knowledge of evil. 

It has been argued that if God knows the forms and 
extent of evil, it exists by his permission, and so has a 
plain right of existence, and we should not attempt its 
removal or destruction. But as evil does exist, that is 
only a backhanded way of confessing that evil exists 
only because of God's ignorance, so that God's ignorance 
is indirectly the cause of evil. But for that ignorance 
evil would not be allowed to exist. As we know too 
well the existence of evil, had we not better inform God 
of it, so that he may destroy it ? 

Instead of explaining the existence of evil by God's 
ignorance, it would surely be far better to explain it by 
God's wisdom and knowledge permitting and limiting 
and regulating it until it can be removed and destroyed 
in accordance with laws whose operation will ultimately 
turn the evil to good. This is the way we prefer to 
explain it. While God knows it in detail, he also knows 
that to destroy it at once without any reference to man's 
psychological laws, or to have absolutely prevented its 
origin, would be a greater evil than to let it come and 
then by necessary law arising from its very nature allow 
it to destroy itself by its interaction and counteraction 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 99 

relative to the good, which always and everywhere seeks 
its destruction — in accordance with law. This leaves 
us a God, an infinite Omniscience, and a procedure for 
him and us which is perfectly rational. 

If God knows men he knows the evil as well as the 
good. If he knows my good and happy thoughts and 
feelings and actions, he knows those of the opposite 
character. There is no reason or law of intelligence 
according to which he can know the one without know- 
ing the other. They are equally states of my own 
mind. I am his creature, and he does not even know 
his own creation and child, if he does not know me in 
the shade as well as the sunshine, in adversity as well 
as in prosperity, in sorrow as well as in joy, in error and 
sickness as well as in health and favoring light and 
knowledge. 

At the same time, if any think they must take the 
other side in order to realize and exemplify the healing 
agency, they are welcome to their notion, and they will, 
it is hoped, grant the same liberty to those who differ 
from them. We know good healers who are diametri- 
cally opposed to each other in their metaphysics 
on this particular point. I do not claim that the view I 
advocate is at all necessary to any theory of healing, but 
only that it is necessary to my conception of Infinite 
Perfection, without which all theories are worthless, and 
all effort for good is discouraged. 

We may indeed plead that it is a relief to think that 
God does not know " the evil that is done under the 
sun," else he could not sit still and tolerate it. This to 
depressed or biased minds may seem an excuse for 
what they call God in allowing such things. They save 



100 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

his goodness at the expense of his intelligence. Poor 
God ! if he only knew, how good he would be ! We 
will love him for his goodness, and excuse his impotence 
and its fearful consequences arising from his ignorance. 
Still we are depressed with the reflection that we have 
no Infinite God ; for a blind Deity is as surely finite as 
a cruel Deity. 

In all this argument the author moves in opposition to 
cherished friends. This would have stayed his pen did 
he not love principles more than persons, and truth more 
than friends. But he is entitled to assume that here 
they are one with him, and that they will rejoice in his 
honest effort to enlighten them, quite as much as in any 
other course. Indeed, it is often the spirit in which we 
prosecute our labors, more than in the particular thought 
developed, that the value of our labors consists. A cor- 
rect idea with a bad heart is on the whole far worse than 
some error of judgment with a good heart. Veracity in 
love is better than loveless contention for truth. 

The passages in Scripture which teach the divine 
omniscience are numerous, various, and often very strik- 
ing, and they are very emphatic, especially in affirma- 
tions that God takes cognizance of men's sorrows and 
sins, and that in special detail. 

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou 
knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. Thou un- 
derstandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my 
path and my lying down, and art acquinted with all my 
ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O 
Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men, and they are 
vanity. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. IOI 

T know the things that come in your mind, every one 
of them. 

God's knowledge of the wicked and their Sins. 

God saw that the wickedness of men was great on the 
earth, and the very imagination of the thoughts of his 
Jieart was only evil continually. 

He knoweth vain men, he seeth wickedness also. Will 
he not then consider it ? 

TJicre is no darkness nor show of death, where the 
workers of iniquity can hide themselves. 

My sins are not hid from tJiee. 

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. Our secret 
sins in the light of thy countenance. 

The ways of men are before the eyes of the Lord, and 
he pondereth all his goings. 

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding 
the evil and tJie good. 

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not 
see him, saith the Lord ? 

Thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of 
men. 

The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all 
the imaginations of the thoughts. 

Mine eyes are upon all their ways, neither is their 
iniquity hid from mine eyes. 

I know your manifold transgression, and your iniquity 
and sins. 

I have sinned against heaven in thy sight. 

These extracts need little comment. They expressly 
affirm the divine knowledge of evil in every form. Those 
who have a theory to support may possibly by much 
effort and violence interpret them otherwise. But had 



102 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

God's foreknowledge purposed to contradict such a 
theory, he could not have used stronger or more explicit 
language to that effect than these extracts present. 

It has been argued that as to light there is no dark- 
ness, to mind no matter, to joy no sorrow, so to good 
there is no evil, and to purity no impurity, and to truth 
no error, and to wisdom no folly; and so to God, the 
all-good, there can be only good. This will appear to 
many as merely a play upon words, and as a " darkening 
of counsel by words without knowledge." Let us an- 
alyze it till we discern its significance. 

"To light there is no darkness." This is clear as an 
assertion that there is no darkness where there is light 
and so far as there is light, else light were not light. 
From this the inference is drawn that the same holds 
true of spiritual light and darkness. This inference is 
good only on the assumption that there is a likeness 
between sensible light and spiritual light of God. This 
assumption is opposed by the principle that the finite 
and infinite are always to be contrasted, and that we 
must reason from either to the other by the law of oppo- 
sites. This principle is often uttered and used by the 
advocates of the theory in question. On this principle 
we are obliged to reverse our conclusion from the prem- 
ises and say, that as finite and sensible, light cannot go 
beyond itself into darkness ; therefore, that which is in- 
finitely contrasted with light can travel into darkness 
without destroying it and so can cognize that darkness in 
contrast with itself. This accords with common sense 
and all experience. Truth and goodness are found in 
the midst of error and sin, and know them without being 
known by them. This is also the affirmation of John's 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 103 

Gospel, which says that the light was in the darkness, 
and the darkness comprehended it not. The light 
knew, but was not known by, the darkness, and so the 
darkness was not destroyed by the presence of the light 
— not in all cases. 

Now all the other verbal antitheses above quoted may 
be answered in the same way, and with a like issue. 
But I care not for any such argument. It is unworthy of 
prosecution or of elaborate answer, because it is only a 
pure verbalism all through. Of course it is true that noth- 
ing is its own opposite, which is all that these balanced 
oppositions of words means. But that has nothing to do 
with the other assertion, that he who has joy has no 
sorrow, that he who has intelligence cannot err nor have 
intelligence to know any error of another. There is no 
error to truth in the sense that truth contains error, but 
not in the sense that a perfectly true intelligence cannot 
discern error in others. 

What then is to become of the doctrine of healing ? 
If evil is good, why not let it remain, and if it is of God 
is it not sacrilege to attempt its removal? This is the 
way some have reasoned theoretically and practically. 
On this principle people thrown by tempests on some 
strange coasts, were once deemed doomed by the gods, 
and left to perish, or were murdered and robbed ; and in 
various ways this principle has in all ages and countries 
branded with opprobrium the weak, the sick, and the 
unfortunate. 

There is a better way, in accordance with the truths 
already expounded, and with the doctrine of a deeper 
and broader Christian Pneumatopathy. As already said, 
the normal condition and process and end of all creation 



104 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

is wholeness, health and elevation and progress. These, 
therefore, are the will of God, and are always to be 
sought with perfect confidence. Suffering is never an 
end. It is not an intrinsic good, and where it does no 
good it is an intrinsic evil, and should be abolished. It 
is, therefore, our duty always to attempt its removal ; 
and we shall always succeed if our efforts conform to the 
laws which govern the case, and otherwise we shall not* 
for healing against law would not be good, would not be 
healing in the comprehensive sense, because all evil is 
only a violation of some law. 

These laws are of three classes : physical, intellectual 
and moral or religious. We can know them only in part, 
and their particular bearing on each individual case. 
That is only and always fully known to God, and it is 
our duty to use our utmost effort to heal, and then leave 
the issue with God, and we may also be assured, that 
if suffering is not then removed, it can be improved for 
some higher end, and will be if the patient will co-operate 
in spiritual submission and hope. This consideration 
will sweeten every sorrow, and shed a lambent light on 
every dark experience. 

But in order to do this we must recognize the evil as 
an abnormal and obtrusive phenomenon, which has to be 
swept away. Else why should any one come to us and 
tell us they need our agency, our mental action in their 
behalf. If ignorance or inattention is best, why did they 
not try to conceal their need from us, in order that our 
healing power might operate with the most efficacy ; and 
why did we not heal them before we knew of them, and 
as there is plenty of evil we do not know, why do we not 
heal it all? For the same reason and on the same 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 105 

principle, we ask, why Jesus healed only those who 
came to him or for whom intercession was made ? If 
this doctrine is true, and if God knows no evil and 
thence heals, why does he not unconsciously destroy it 
all, and keep it so ? 



106 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



PAET FIFTH. 



PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO MIND AND MATTER. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MATERIALISTIC PNEUMATOPATHY. 

All theories of mental healing abut directly on psy- 
chology and metaphysics, and may therefore be classified 
as these are classified. Of these there can be but two 
main theories, monism and dualism (or pluralism), and 
monism is either material or spiritual, making all things 
matter or all things spirit. These will have to be ex- 
amined in relation to our subject. 

We will take materialism first. It comes first in the 
order of time. It is first from the law of experience. 
Our first life as related to the organism is of the senses, 
and thought developes through the action of the senses. 
In this initial condition and form the sense-life seems to 
be about all there is. 

Hence, the first attempts at philosophy will naturally 
be some species of sensism or materialism. It will en- 
deavor to explain all things on the sole basis of sense as 
the ultimate form and source of all knowledge and power 
or force. It is thus that philosophy began among the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 107 

Greeks. Near the same time it began in a similar way 
among the Hindoos. In this spirit philosophy was begun 
in England by Hobbes. 

The modern doctrine of mental healing could not 
originate with the adherents of this doctrine, because 
t-hey have no eye for anything which does not at once 
register itself under the regime of sense. 

But after the doctrine has taken root and gained pop- 
ularity, and given indisputable proof of its basis in facts, 
then materialism is put on the defensive by it, and is 
bound to explain the admitted facts according to its 
theory. This, therefore, has been elaborately attempted; 
and it has even put forth a claim to be the true and gen- 
uine Pneumatopathy. It has done it on this wise : 
Mind is known only as a finer form of sense, and there- 
fore, in its most subtle action it has a lexical connection 
with sensible phenomena, and all known phenomena are 
the various models of the one great force. Hence, the 
normal interaction of mind and body. It is a funda- 
mental law that the body effects the mind and the mind 
the body ; and the sole mission of science on this sub- 
ject is to trace their relations. In prosecuting this task 
we find that fear and mental assumption of harm and 
sickness often generate them, and that the opposite feel- 
ing and convention avoids them and conquers them. 
Hence, if by any means we can persuade an invalid that 
there is nothing the matter with him, it will often so 
operate on his body as to cure his malady, and some- 
times very speedily. 

This mental action in healing is the scientific explana- 
tion of the faith-cure of the New Testament, it is alleged ; 
and all the Bible is thence in accordance with this, inter- 



108 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

preted on a materialistic basis, and this explanation of the 
New Testament healing is advocated as the true Pneu- 
matopathy. 

The simplicity of this doctrine is charming, as all must 
confess, and it is not without force as an argument — 
provided its simplicity is not just that step from the 
sublime, which is its most effectual condemnation. This 
is the light in which it appears to me. It is infinitely 
too small, besides being in conflict with our deeper con- 
sciousness and the most advanced psychological analysis 
which human thought has attained. But on the exposi- 
tion of this we cannot enter. 

Good people may hold to the material theory of all 
conscious agency, which is exemplified in David Hartley, 
Joseph Priestly, and many thousands of the "Adven- 
tists " in the Christian churches. Consequently the 
mental healing such people do in the name of the Lord, 
may be reasonably claimed as Christian healing, whether 
or not it be a just expression of Pneumatopathy, and it 
may claim the name of science so far as it expounds a 
law of such healing. 

So far as any body of people only advocate a divine 
healing, in consonance with human faith to that effect, 
without any reference to a psychogical and spiritual law 
which governs the transaction they are only religionists, 
not scientists. Theirs is purely a faith cure. But if 
these say it is a moral and spiritual law, fundamental 
to the nature of God in relation to man, that is, to re- 
ligion, and that they act upon it and advocate it, then 
they enter into the ranks of science, incipient science, 
to say the least. For this is all that these materialists 
do. We shall also find as we proceed, that nobody does 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. IO9 

any more than this. They discover a law of healing, 
though some discover this a posteriori, and others a 
priori. The latter are those who set up the exclusive 
claim to be the only genuine Christian Scientists. They 
say that such is the nature of God and man that heal- 
ing follows as a logical consequence of attaining the 
true conception, so that perfection in every particular 
consists in correct understanding. Disease and pain 
are only error, which is destroyed by Truth, and Truth 
is taught by Christian Science and by that only. This 
a priori Truth is verefied and demonstrated, they claim, 
by the manifest effects which follow the solemn mental 
use of their formula in the exercise of understanding. 



IIO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DUALISTIC PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Advancing intelligence could not be content with 
only materialistic conclusions. While unprepared to 
deny matter, men began to affirm the existence of some- 
thing contrasted with the known grosser qualities called 
material, and this they gradually agreed to designate as 
spirit (Pneuma) or ghost (geist) ; taking the most subtle 
agent known as a symbol and index of one still more 
subtle, and thence the term once used to denote wind 
and gas and vapor came to denote exclusively the more 
subtle and supersensible power. 

By what mental process, or by what experiences this 
conclusion was reached, there is much dispute. But 
there is no question that such was attained quite early in 
the course of human progress. I have no doubt that all 
the modes and methods were followed by different minds, 
just as now we are constantly seeing men reach the same 
positions by different routes, and also different conclus- 
ions from the same premises. It is to our purpose of 
no consequence whether this conviction was generated 
by the supposed sight of ghost, as some allege, or through 
a natural desire and ambition of prolonged existence and 
power, as claimed by others, or whether it comes through 
a growing sense of being something superior to matter. 
This second form of speculative thought is Dualism — 
the doctrine that there are two distinct antipodal sub- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Ill 

stances, matter and spirit, and that these two are in this 
life united in one individual consciousness, and that death 
is the dissolution of this connection. 

The early writers of the Bible are quite materialistic, 
but they grow more refined with the lapse of ages. 
Dualism becomes at last quite pronounced, and this is 
the dominant notion in the New Testament. Jesus 
distinguishes between body and soul when he tells 
us not to fear those who can only destroy the body, 
but rather to fear him who has power over the soul 
as well as over the body. This doctrine is involved 
in the entire New Testament conception of the res- 
urrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection of 
human bodies. Certainly this has been the universal 
interpretation of the Churches. Dualism shapes the 
utterance of Peter when he speaks of putting off this 
tabernacle, and Paul speakes in a similar way of being 
bodily unclothed and then clothed again. The Book of 
Revelations is full of like characteristic implications. 

In all this, these Bible characters and writers shared, 
if they did not inherit, the views of the Chaldeans and 
Egyptians, and the Greeks and Romans had glimpses of 
the same. In contradistinction from man, God is de- 
scribed by Jesus as a Spirit only. 

Hence, Christ and his apostles constituted factors in a 
great faith-cure movement. They had no philosophy on 
the subject. They believed in the goodness and power 
of God, who bestowed great favors in answer to a loving, 
trusting prayer. This was the whole of their " Christian 
Science." This has been the Christian Science of very 
many devout souls in the Church from that time, as it is 
now, and it has never been wholly ineffective. 



112 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

There is no evidence that they, least of all Jesus, had 
any esoteric doctrine, which was concealed from the 
public. Such a view is foreign to the whole style of 
Jesus. They taught a religion, not a science. They 
addressed the moral and spiritual intuition, not the met- 
aphysical faculty. They made no pretension to the wis- 
dom of philosophy and science, but rather decried it as 
a thing which had done very little for the spiritual uplift- 
ing of the world. This was to be done, they taught, not 
by a subtle intellectual action, but by a pure and simple 
uplifting of the heart to God as the heavenly Father, the 
infinite Love ; that it was not necessary to understand 
the metaphysics of it as a condition of realizing its 
power. 

Why, then, are we not content with what they had ? 
For the same reason that they were not content with 
Moses. They had outgrown him and advanced to a 
better conception of morals and religion. This they 
must utter. They could do no more. This was not only 
better than previous religions, but it was better than any 
of the existing philosophies, which were of no use to the 
average mind, and in this light they might well be decried. 
As the age of Jesus had outgrown the religion of Moses, 
so our age is outgrowing the philosophy of the apostolic 
age, and it demands a religion which is scientific, and to 
understand the philosophy of its own procedure. 

There are dualists who advocate a law of mental heal- 
ing, and who therefore claim that mental healing is re- 
ducible to a science. 

These are of two classes, those who affirm, and those 
who deny, that matter is a force and operates on the 
mind, besides being operated on by mind. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 113 

If it is not a force it may as well be counted out, since 
it can neither do nor suffer anything. It is not a factor 
anywhere. Those, therefore, who affirm a material sub- 
stance and yet deny to it all force, only admit a word 
without any meaning. It cannot even receive anything 
from mind, if it have no force, for the verb " to receive " 
is an active verb in active form, and " reception " is an 
active process, the exercise of some degree of force. 
Besides, that which it receives from mind is acknowl- 
edged to be force or power, and so far as it receives this, 
it is empowered and made forceful. To say that it is 
still mental force only, and that in all the action of mat- 
ter, mental force is the real and only agent, and moves 
and shapes matter as a thing absolutely passive, only 
changes the form of the logical difficulty. For if matter 
does nothing and suffers nothing, it undergoes no changes 
and is not, and cannot be, used, and is of no use what- 
ever. Mind can do just as well without as with it. If 
there is no strength in an iron pillar, so that the super' 
incumbent weight is supported only by mind, and not by 
the pillar, then remove the pillar and let the way be clear 
«and do the work without it. If the building would then 
fall, we must attribute it to the removal of the pillar, and 
so attribute the supporting force to the pillar. It may be 
alleged that for some cause the mind operates better 
through the use of the pillar than without it, but that is 
only to confess that the pillar has a force of a very ex- 
alted rank since it aids the action of mind ; and it aids 
this action according to a law of quantity and quality, for 
a bamboo stick or a slender iron rod will not accomplish 
here the desired object. In no possible way can we admit 
of the existence and serviceable action of matter except 



114 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

so far as we conceive it as a force. We cannot make it 
an instrument of mental force except so far as it has 
some quality which mind uses for its own ends, and 
quality is but another name for force or power, just as 
thought and feeling and will are mental qualities or forces 
or powers. Therefore, if we admit the existence and 
serviceableness and possible usefulness of matter we 
must also admit that it is so far a quality or force. 

Still, there are those who do not recognize this logical 
necessity, and while admitting the existence of matter, 
they persist in the affirmation that " matter is dead and 
inert," a notion which modern science has generally 
abandoned. Of course we shall have to let these be in- 
consistent till they see more clearly. They are useful in 
their place and way. These half-way people are just as 
necessary as those who are more advanced, because they 
are hooked to those in the rear as well as to those in 
front, whence the whole mass as a grand unit feels the 
impulsive force of the eternal mind. 

It is, however, the duty of the advanced column to 
show their light, so that in the wake of it all may follow 
as fast as they are able. For this reason we have stated 
and refuted the foregoing metaphysical theory of a force- 
less matter, and for the same reason we must show how 
it stands in the way of a science of healing, or of a con- 
sistent theory of the metaphysical laws of healing. 

This theory of matter is a cumbrous addendum for 
which the science of healing has no use, and which it 
cannot explain. It cannot have any use for that which 
has absolutely no power, for then it has no power to be 
of any service. We cannot explain anything except by 
its qualities and their relations, and if matter has no 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 115 

qualities it has no relations, and there is nothing to ex- 
plain or by which to explain. 

Besides, if matter is declared to be error or evil or the 
cause thereof, it is thereby declared to be a force, unless 
a cause is forceless, which contradicts itself. If error 
and evil and their cause are all absolutely nothing, then 
matter is absolutely nothing, has no existence ; and this 
again contradicts the theory that matter exists, but is 
forceless, " dead and inert " in itself, but animated and 
moved by mind. 

All this can be overlooked, and we can go on asserting 
that matter being dead and inert, mind in some way gives 
to it all its evil and ah its good, and that this mind is 
the source of disease and health, and that a correct 
and divinely noble habit of mental action, iucluding 
thought, feeling and volition, universally attained, would 
be the attainment of universal perfection in a perfect 
universe. 

This is beautiful and grand, and the thorough convic- 
tion of it is already producing great results for the good 
of mankind. The logical objections we have mentioned 
against the material metaphysics of this theory, seem to 
be no obstacle in the way of the practical effectiveness 
of those who hold it. There are no better healers, I 
believe, than some of these. They are ardent, earnest, 
honest, and their strong conviction rouses others to a 
loftier mental action, which diffuses health and vigor 
through the body. We can only wish them continued 
and augmented success in their labors. Not only are 
they good as healers, but they promote progress in met- 
aphysics, by fostering a conviction of the transcendent 
and even exclusive power and agency of mind, which is 



Il6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

a great step beyond material sensism, which makes the 
sensible world the source of all force and life. 

If anybody feels obliged to affirm the existence of 
matter, it is well that they make as little of it as possible. 
We would rather have a powerless, than a powerful and 
an almighty matter. This is the merit of the party in 
question, and this is the secret of their success. But for 
that very reason, it would seem that they would be still 
more effective, as well as logically consistent and strong, 
if they discarded matter altogether. If, instead of affirm- 
ing aught but mind, they said that all sensible phenom- 
ena are concreted mental states, or a " synthesis of sen- 
sations" they would simplify their position, and all would 
then see clearly how the general state of the mind affects 
and produces and constitutes health and disease and 
error and truth in their human relations. 

If, on the other hand, matter is conceived as involving 
a complexity of forces peculiar to itself, new problems 
are forced upon us. These forces, as the opposite of 
spirit-forces must have their laws of operation in opposi- 
tion to the normal agency of spirit. Thus we have a 
constant and universal disharmony and conflict between 
two great forces, and though we know which of the two is 
the nobler, we do not, as yet, know from experience which 
is the stronger, nor whether they are not both eternal, 
and forever able to defy and oppose each other. In this 
world it doubtless appears very clearly to most people 
that matter has generally and vastly the advantage ; that 
it secures by far the most homage and devotion, and be- 
stows the most substantial advantages and satisfactions 
on its worshipers. 

This is inconsistent with a profound understanding of 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 117 

Christian Theism, which affirms that God is over all, in 
all, and the end of all. The universe of God, therefore, 
must be a z/zzz-verse, a unity of finite forces under his 
control, and subservient to his will as the perfect and 
infinite moral Governor of all. The existence of two 
such opposite and even antagonizing forces, it would seem, 
are incompatible with the existence of such a Being — 
much less can we conceive the inferior, the enemy of 
spirit, to be his creature. 

Such a power as this matter, irrespective of spirit, and 
in opposition to spirit, tempts to evil, and independently 
produces evil, and opposes all spiritual remedies of evil, 
and naturally, according to a law of homeopathy, claims 
to be itself the only cure of its own evils. Hence, the 
doctrine of mental healing is rejected beforehand, and a 
divine miraculous mental healing by over-riding the laws 
of matter, becomes incredible. If matter with its forces 
and laws are of God's creation, why should he interfere 
with them and so turn against himself ? That cannot be 
received by scientific minds. They must either hold that 
there is no such matter or there is no such a God who 
embroils himself with his own creature, which he has so 
made that it inevitably opposes his own goodness. Thus 
the essential doctrine of mental healing, divine or human, 
has no sphere, and physical science must throw it out as 
utterly discredited. 

We have already seen that if matter is allowed at all, 
it must be allowed as a force as well as a phenomenon, 
that otherwise we are involved in logical inconsistencies, 
and indulge in unmeaning terms and phrases. Hence, 
the real logical alternative is between a forceful matter or 
no matter at all. Accordingly, the majority of the teach- 



Il8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

ers and advocates of exclusive mental agency in healing 
deny the existence of matter as anything more than a 
mental illusion or synthesis of sensations or as a mortal 
thought (whetever that means) or as a subjective state, a 
mental condition, a mode of mind. The exposition and 
defense of this supermaterialistic and idealistic theory of 
healing it will next devolve upon us to consider. 

To those who admit the existence of matter and 
material force, a thoroughly scientific and philosophical 
Pneumatopathy is impossible. They may have a theory, 
but it will be incomplete, inconsistant and superficial, 
and they may heal by faith, by the strength of their con- 
victions, and the stimulus they thus impart to other 
minds. But " Science " is with them rather a wish and 
a faith than an intellectual attainment. They have to 
admit that the intellectual conjunction and unity of mind 
and matter is entirely inexplicable, and the rational expos- 
ition of their union in one conscious personality is uni- 
versally surrendered. It is a confessed absolute mystery. 
It seems a pure inconsistency and contradiction. This 
utterly destroys the science of Pneumatopathy. It shows 
us two worlds with a gulf of absolute and vacuous dark- 
ness between. It theoretically affirms that the two 
worlds of body and mind are one person. At the same 
time, it affirms that this appears impossible, because 
there are two substances, and these two utterly different 
from each other, while the person is one, a pure and 
perfect unit. It affirms that matter is unconscious and 
so cannot think or feel, and that this is the sole and 
characteristic prerogative of mind, and that yet the 
thinking, feeling person is composed of both body and 
mind. Such contradictions as these are not science or 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 19 

philosophy. Either we must abandon this or abandon 
all claim to a thoroughly scientific Pneumatopathy. Con- 
sistency is the first requisite of a scientific theory. 
Whatever involves contradictions is erroneous. To cling 
to anything of such a character marks the dogmatist, 
not the scientist or the philosopher. We are bound to 
be everywhere and all along consistent with ourselves 
and with all facts. This is the aim and claim of our 
Christian Pneumatopathy. 

On the theory that all is mind, that all the forms of sense 
are unconscious mind or mind in its inferior modes and 
potencies, immense obstructions are removed from the 
path of Pneumatopathy. It is vastly simplified. It is 
reduced to a metaphysical and a logical unity. All the 
action of spirit is on or within itself. It has no opposi- 
tions to conquer from a foreign substance. It has no 
laws to reverse inherent in such substance as not only 
foreign but opposed to itself. If the things of sense are 
such a substance, then the spirit in order to operate on 
matter has to cross the whole diameter of being. It has 
to act in opposition to the laws of the inherent agency of 
another substance, thus contradicting a law of creation. 
Why should it be made with its intrinsic laws, if it is to 
be thus opposed, obstructed and reversed ? The suppos- 
ition is unphilosophical. All this difficulty is removed 
by the theory of spiritual universalism. This makes the 
action of the mind on the body and of the body on the 
mind, to be all spiritual action and effect. It affirms a 
unity of force, and therefore an ultimate unity of the 
action of sensible and supersensible laws, so that there 
is no repression or suspension of law in mental healing. 
The higher power of the mind simply operates on the 



120 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

lower for its good and for total good. Mental healing is 
thus seen to be a natural and normal process, a thing to 
be expected, to be studied and scientifically developed. 
The agency of the divine, as well as the human mind in 
healing may thence be rationally justified and proximately 
expounded. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 121 



CHAPTER XIX. 

MAN AS THE IMAGE OF GOD. 

Here we will call attention to a reasonable argument 
which has been drawn from scripture in favor of the 
doctrine that all is mind, so far at least as man is con- 
cerned, so that what is called his body, and therefore all 
matter, are spiritual, modes of spirit, a system of sensa- 
tions which spirit feels and generates in itself. 

God is spirit, and all his action and all the ends he 
seeks are spiritual. Hence his creation should be wholly 
spiritual. 

Accordingly the bible tells us that God made man in 
his own image and likeness. This must refer to God's 
spiritual nature since he has no other, and hence man's 
real nature is also spiritual, of the same essential kind 
of being with that of God, though infinitely less in 
degree. 

According to this, man's body is not man, nor a part 
of man, unless this body is spiritual, a form and mode of 
man's spirit. Then if our body is spiritual we must say 
the same of the external world whence the organism 
comes, and into which it is dissolved after death. Hence, 
too, as the body is one with the spirit of man and with 
the external world, they are all one, on the axiom that any 
two things agreeing with each other, agree with a third. 

This is an exposition which in earlier times was im- 
possible because of the prevailing grossness of concep- 
tion. 



122 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XX. 

SENSE-CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTIFIES BODY WITH MIND. 

The theory of dualism goes against all sense-con- 
sciousness. There is no dualism there. In every sen- 
sation, whatever its form and location, consciousness 
has ever the same subject and pronoun. I feel now in 
the head, now in the feet, the hand, the side. What- 
ever the feeling is, it is the same one personality that 
feels. The body so called belongs to the mind, is the 
mind, and is appropriated by the mind as a mode of it- 
self. The mind says, I have a pain in my head, or my 
headaches, meaning that the aching of the head is the 
aching of the mind. Thus the sense-consciousness is 
constantly saying, that only mind feels, and it feels only 
mind, and never knows aught else than mind and its 
thoughts and feelings. 

The body, so called, is, therefore, nothing but a pecu- 
liar class of feelings, or modes of mind, a complex of 
mental states. These states, like all other mental states, 
are generated and pass away and recur, according 
to a primary law of our creation or organization. And 
there is also, for the same reason, a law of regulation 
and possible control of them, so that we can in some 
large and indefinable degree secure some and avoid 
others. As we have this power we have hence a moral 
obligation to secure the noblest and most useful for our- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 23 

selves and others. The action of these laws brings on 
what men call death, which is but a change in the men- 
tal state of this department, and we ought to learn to 
shape it so that this event shall come as a cycle of assured 
progress. 

A perfectly matured transition would not perhaps 
leave any body behind, but the body would wholly dis- 
appear, like that of Elijah and Jesus. These bodies 
were so changed by the mental process of spiritual eleva- 
tion that they ceased to belong to the lower order of 
mental forms where they had formerly ranked, and so 
passed beyond the recognition of our grosser sense. 
Those who leave bodies to be buried probably undergo 
an inferior change. They pass from our form to one 
closely allied with it. In strictness of speech, they do 
not leave any body behind, but survivors have certain 
sensations which they thus designate, and which are 
symbolic of the undeveloped spirituality of the departed. 



124 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

DREAMS AS PROOF THAT ALL IS MIND. 

Dreams cannot be psychologically interpreted without 
making them tell the same story. They are conscious 
mental activities independent of the grosser bodily organ- 
ism,, recognized by other people. Yet in dreams we 
always have an organism. We create the organism for the 
occasion. We run, walk, talk, work and play in the use of 
this temporarily manufactured organism. In these varied 
dream exercises we experience all the successes and 
failures, all the pleasures and pains of what is called the 
real life or real organism, and sometimes they are far 
more intense and vigorous in misery, and at other times 
more exquisite and exalted in pleasure than the waking 
hours so-called ever knew. 

We not only mentally evolve a mental, yet sensible 
organism in sleep, but we also evolve in the same way 
other sensible organisms in a sensible world. We meet 
and embrace our friends, and every sense is in full activ- 
ity. Strangers, too, various, numerous, and in various 
situations and relations come on the scene, "large as life" 
and as natural as life. To the dreamer all this is a real 
conscious world, just as much a matter of fact to his ex- 
perience and consciousness as the world we agree to call 
real. No one doubts that all this of the dream is wholly 
mental, a series of self-generated thoughts, feelings, 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 25 

pictures, activities, with all their various results. Now if 
this achievement is almost as common as sleep, why 
should we imagine any other origin for the sensible world 
of our waking hours ? If we can create a universe of 
sensible phenomena involuntarily in our sleep much more 
must we be able to do the same when our powers are in 
fuller exercise ? 

The same truth is taught by the abnormal dreams of 
narcotization from the use of various drugs. They say 
that the use of opium translates its delighted victim 
into a new world. The abnormal state of the mind gen- 
erates an abnormal sensible world peculiar to the subject, 
a world of various sensible activities and indescribable 
experiences, which are all just as real to their conscious- 
ness as any world they ever knew. If drugs can do this, 
why cannot the normal mental power generate the 
normal sensible world ? 

It is objected that these sensible phenomena of dreams 
and of narcotic visions are the effect only of peculiar 
conditions. It is often astonishing to note how prejudg- 
ment and prepossession destroy all power of appreciating 
the significance of our own worlds. The above objec- 
tion is an example. They are almost the very words we 
have used in stating the doctrine they are adduced to 
oppose. Of course, sleep and drunkenness are peculiar 
conditions in contrast with soberness and wakefulness, 
and it is precisely in that light I have mentioned them. 
The objection confesses that the mind in these " condi- 
tions " is the source of these phenomena. That is all I 
have affirmed, and I have simply thence inferred, that if 
the mind has such wondrous power as to create a sen- 
sible universe in these lower conditions, how much nobler 



126 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

a universe should it be able to evolve in nobler conditions, 
and how much more staple a one in its waking activity ? 

What is the difference between the dreaming and 
waking world, which makes us call one real and the other 
unreal ? The answer to this question will give us the 
final analysis of this subject. Both worlds are equally 
real or unreal. They are both unreal if reality is consid- 
ered as anything else than mental states, and they are 
both equally real as mental states. 

It has been claimed that the difference between them 
is, that when we are awake, we know it, and that when 
we are asleep, we only think we are awake. This has 
been said with an air and a vehemence of dogmatic final- 
ity which justly shuts off, it is supposed, all further 
question. But this is as superficial as it is dogmatic. In 
dreams we do not usually think we are awake, because 
we do not think anything at all about that question- 
We do not give it the slightest thought or attention. 
So in our waking hours we seldom raise any question of 
that kind. We simply live, eat and think, suffer and 
enjoy. It is precisely the same in sleep. We are in both 
states simply occupied with and absorbed in the world 
as it appears to our consciousness. In each case we 
know just this and no more, a world of phenomena in 
co-existence and succession. 

When the question of reality is raised it is the same in 
both states. It is not an uncommon thing for persons 
in a very unusual set of experiences or circumstances to 
raise the question whether they are awake or dreaming, 
and to determine the question, they change their posi- 
tion, pinch and pull themselves, look out of the window 
and speak to somebody. In sleep also, at rare intervals, 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 127 

and in rare circumstances, people raise the question, 
whether they are not really dreaming. They have been 
known to dream the same thing twice, and at the second 
time to recognize it as only a former dream. They have 
been known to dream of dreaming assuming that they are 
awake in their dream, they dream that they fall asleep 
and dream various things. They thus in sleep think both 
that they are awake and asleep, and in sleep they thus 
make a difference between sleep and waking just as we 
do when it is agreed that we are awake. 

Thus far we have been able to draw no line of demar- 
cation between sleeping and awaking. 

Of both, we have only been able to find a varied con- 
sious activity and passivity of sensible experience as well 
as supersensible action with the act and object equally 
real to consciousness. 

It is related of a celebrated metaphysician that he 
frequently dreamed of being on the parapet of a bridge 
and fell over into the abyss below, awaking in a fright. 
He was advised when he was in the dream again, to say 
to himself : " This is only a dream and I can throw my- 
self over the bridge without harm." This he did, and 
carried it through, and so changed the experience accord- 
ing to his waking purpose. Here waking and sleeping 
with their life of action run and blend into each other. 

Another curious phenomenon of dreams is that, it is 
only by experience that children learn to distinguish be- 
tween them and the events of the wakinsr hours. I have 
often seen a child tell a dream or portions of a dream as 
real as positive facts, and they have had to be corrected 
till they learned to see the difference. In full, clear 
manhood, I have myself, on first awaking, taken a dream 



128 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

for the waking life. Here we see that the difference is 
not between conscious reality and unreality, but only 
between different classes of events or experience, all of 
which is conscious reality, and there is no other reality 
that can be known. 

It is not an uncommon thing for dreams to animate 
the body into vigorous and violent action. A person 
dreaming of danger leaps, runs and cries out sometimes 
very much the same as when awake. In dreams, belig- 
erants fight, racers run, orators speak, and whatever be 
the dream, if it is very vigorous and intense, it is not 
unlikely to be carried out into bodily action. Thus men 
have done manual work, they have written pages of care- 
ful and elaborate composition in the dark with unwonted 
precision, and sometimes they have performed wonderful 
feats of dexterity, and rarely they have been guilty of 
wrong doing or even of crime. Somnambulism is but a 
dream by which the body is stimulated and guided in 
action. Dreamers have often discovered facts and prin- 
ciples, which the waking thoughts and senses have been 
thence led and enable to verify, thus again connecting 
the two states into one conscious life. 

It is perhaps in the relation of dreams and waking 
conditions to the organism, that we can most extensively 
draw a psychological line between them. While dreams 
do often exercise the organism to regular and systematic 
action, that is the exception, not the rule. It is the law 
of the waking condition, that our organism is in practi- 
cal and sensible connection with that of other persons 
and with the sensible world common to all of them, so 
that my sensible experience can be discerned and regu- 
larly shared by others. In dreams this is usually re- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 29 

versed. The world of dreams is utterly isolated from that 
which belongs to the connections between his organism 
and other organisms. We sit or stand by the side of the 
recumbent dreamer, and have no share in the world in 
which he is living. We are entirely unknown to him, 
just as all his conscious activities are unknown to us. 
The dreamer has evolved a sensible world in which the 
body on the bed visible to us has no part. That visible 
body belongs to our world, but not to the world of the 
dreamer. Now when the dream is ended, and the 
dreamer awakes, he connects with this organism his con- 
scious states and activities. Then this organism of his 
becomes consciously related to our organism and to the 
world in which it lives and moves and has its being. 
Here it may seem we have a line of demarcation be- 
tween sleeping and waking. But on closer inspection it is 
found to be very imperfect, because there are many and 
striking exceptions to it. But even if it were perfect, 
it would not show a line of demarcation between matter 
and spirit, but only exemplify different classes of mental 
actions or subjective states. 

Let us further observe that there is not always an 
unconscious gulf between the sleeper and waking per- 
sons present. People often talk in their sleep, and some 
of these will hear what is said to them, and believe it, 
and respond and act accordingly. With a few persons 
in sleep this can be carried on to a large extent. They 
can be led to disclose all their secrets, or to adopt the 
pretended notions of the waking speaker ; and like a 
mesmerized subject, they can be led to enact various 
characters and conditions, according to the intent of 
the speaker. These phenomena reveal simply the various 



I30 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

actions of mind and its power to generate and vary its 
own world. 

I dreamed recently that in a large place I developed 
a power to float easily in the air at will, and that by a 
movement of the hand I could quicken or retard and 
direct my movements, and from my airy elevation I 
could look down with serene delight on the upturned 
faces of my friends and other common mortals below. 
In this spirit I practiced my special power before them 
like a pigeon or a swallow. How real was all this to my 
consciousness, and how happy it was. 

Presently I began to reflect how strange it was that I 
alone should be thus endowed, and then I said to my- 
self, it must be wholly a dream, and then I recollected 
that I had several times before dreamed of flying or of 
floating in the air and walking on the water. With the 
conclusion that it was all a dream I ended that scene. 

I then immediately found myself elsewhere, among 
another set of friends. To one of them in particular I 
addressed myself, telling of the singular dream I had 
just had and all my reflections on it. Then suddenly 
I observed that it could not after all be a dream, for I 
had the same power now. Instantly to prove my words 
I floated away up and on and around about in the air at 
will. My world was all my own, but it was just as real 
to me as the world of waking sense. Both are of 
my own creation, only subjective states. We must 
therefore conclude that we have no evidence that the 
dream world is any more subjective and egoistic than the 
waking world, or that they are not equally the involun- 
tary projection of the individual mind. On this hypoth- 
esis all the known facts of consciousness can be most 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I3I 

easily and scientifically explained ; and as this is infi- 
nitely the most simple as well as scientific, it is the only 
one we are justified in holding. Here stands true 
Christian Science when it understands itself as Pneuma- 
topathy. 

I have just touched on this significance of dreams 
elsewhere, but deemed that this more extended treat- 
ment would be useful. But it is not even here treated 
with anything like adequate fulness relative to the 
theme, though full enough probably for the time and 
patience of most readers ; and for that reason only I 
here close the exposition of dreams as proving that all 
is mind, and that the human mind evolves its own sen- 
sible universe as a complex mode of itself or a vast con- 
geries of sensations or mental states, the mind itself 
existing and acting in those states. 

The foregoing reflections give a newer aspect and em- 
phasis to the old and familiar moral proverb, that " life 
is all a dream." We dream of being in a world of 
objects which are all non-egoistic. We wake, and lo it is 
all gone. We discover that all was the action of our 
own mental force. Waking, we go through the same 
dream again ; and then we go to sleep, as we call it, 
and lo, that waking dream of a non-egoistic world is 
all gone ; and we discover it was only the result of our 
mental state, and vanishes and returns with that state. 
By and by we shall wake up in a state which shall be 
more permanent than our present waking state, gener- 
ating anew a peculiar body and world according to our 
mental change. 



132 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

INSANITY AND MESMERISM AS PROOF THAT ALL IS 

MIND. 

All the phenomena of insanity in its various forms 
and degrees tell the same story. Its universally ac- 
knowledged and common characteristic is, that it creates 
a world (more or less incomplete) peculiar to itself. 
Some insane people imagine they are kings or queens, 
and all their friends or the officers of the asylum are 
their ministers and attendants ; and their royal estate as 
one of their own making, is just as real to them as that 
of other monarchs is to them. Some imagine they have 
glass legs, and live in constant fear of having them 
broken ; some that their head is loose on their shoulders 
and that they have to take it carefully off every night 
and lay it on the pillow, and then adjust it to their neck 
every morning; some that they are wolves, and they 
transform their surroundings into a forest, and other 
people into fellow wolves or other objects belonging to 
such a world. These imaginings are for the most part 
only transformations. But many others are creations. 
They have no sense-objects as their ground and source. 
They are wholly and purely subjective in their nature 
and origin. In an empty room the insane orator 
addresses a mighty assembly of people ; an insane 
Nebuchadnezzar or King Lear has commanded his min- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 133 

ions ; the daft poet, philosopher, and the man of com- 
mon mind, has held long conversations with persons who 
were invisible to all but the insane. Cases of this kind 
and others of like nature, showing subjective states pro- 
jected as objective percepts, are numerous, and from their 
striking character and from their comico-pathetic interest 
they are almost universally familiar. It ought to be 
obvious that if insanity can create a world of its own, 
sanity can do it better, more fully, and more systemati- 
cally. 

There are dreams of insanity as well as of sanity ; and 
these exemplify the same law. They show that all forms 
and changes of the phenomena of a sensible world are 
purely of a mental nature and egoistic origin. We are 
all agreed that the objects of the insane man are just 
as real to him as the objects of the senses of the sane 
man are to him, and yet we are all agreed that in one 
case these are wholly and only subjective states. Thus 
it is allowed that the insane can generate a world of 
their own, and if they can do it, surely the same power of 
a more orderly operation should be allowed a sane man. 
The one difference between the two is that one is irreg- 
ular and the other regular. 

The phenomena of mesmerism voice the same great 
truth in a still more striking manner. Mesmerism shows 
not only the power of the human mind to create a 
phenomenal world, but also that one mind has the power 
to induce another mind to generate such a world after 
the pattern of the operator's mind. This part is now so 
generally admitted, that we may leave the skeptics out of 
account, and be content here to argue with those who are 
convinced of it. One man projects his thought into the 



134 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

mind of another, making the other think and feel and 
act just as he wants him, stimulating or paralyzing his 
power of action. This has been verified to the senses 
of most of us, or clearly testified by competent witnesses 
in vast numbers. Now it will be allowed by all that the 
phenomenal world which these mesmerized persons see 
is wholly a congeries of the modes of their own mind, a 
series of mental images and operations ; and that these 
are induced by the will of the mesmerizer and by his 
manipulations. Thus he leads them to generate a sensi- 
ble world of varying phenomena, according in some 
degree to his wish. Now if man can do this in any 
degree or for any period of time, how much more may 
God do it for all time ? How simple it is ! Where is 
the need of matter? Only in the minds of ignorance 
and prejudice. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 135 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PSYCHOLOGY. 

In the study of psychology we should begin without 
any assumptions except such as are necessary in ail 
investigations. We must be consistent with ourselves 
in our procedure and conclusions ; and we must honestly 
endeavor to ascertain and rightly construe all -relevant 
facts. We should have no partialities and preferences 
in their use and the issues to which they point. 

Hence it will be agreed that we ought not to proceed 
on the assumptions of the old doctrine of dualism. 
Whether that be true or not is to be proved, not assumed. 
Neither are we to assume the converse theory of monism, 
whether material or spiritual. Obvious as this is to all, 
it is constantly violated by all parties with an inno- 
cence which is more confusing than refreshing. 

It will be allowed that our analysis of phenomena 
ought to be carried as far as experience and definite 
thought admit. 

A little reflection will show that this analysis makes 
all sense-consciousness abut on super-sensible con- 
sciousness, so that this is our ultimate authority and 
resort. This super-sensible consciousness is an essen- 
tial element in the testimony of sense. But for this 
sense would not be sense, which asserts itself only be- 
cause it is also something more than sense, something 
which transcends both times and spaces, saying : I feel 



I36 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

so and so, here, there, now, and I also felt then. The 
sensations come and go, spring suddenly into existence 
and then perish, while the self-same sensitive power 
exists through all the forms, times and phases of sensi- 
tive experiences and changes. No articulate sensation 
and comparison of sensations is possible, without the 
action of this super-sensible agency and the implied 
conception and consciousness thereof. Here therefore 
in the supersensible conscious power is the disclosed 
tap-root and vital fiber of all sensation or sense-conscious- 
ness. 

If we look at the process of reasoning from sensible 
data we shall be driven to the same conclusion, for the 
reasoning is a super-sensible process and the reasoning 
power is the essential agency in drawing psychological 
conclusions. 

Further, the analysis of sensible phenomena shows, 
not only that sense as well as reasoning from sense imply 
a super-sensible power, but also that sensible objects are 
only a class of modes of that same super-sensible power. 
The sensible world is nothing whatever but a congeries 
of various sensations bound to each other by a mental 
law imposed upon us by some power not ourselves. 
Every quality of matter has been resolved into subjec- 
tive states by nearly all the great psychologists of 
modern times. Consciousness, therefore, and its logi- 
cal implications constitute our ultimate abutment in 
psychological as well as metaphysical investigation. 
We may begin with sense and proceed along the line of 
sense if we choose, but we never reach any ultimate 
philosophical or even psychological conclusion till we 
have legitimately abutted on the super-sensible subject. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 37 

Our "new school of psychology," which affects super- 
ior circumspection and precision of thought and utter- 
ance, is here equally superficial and oblivious of funda- 
mental facts, which ought to be obvious to all psycholo- 
gists. They often affirm that psychology has for its 
object; "the study of nerve phenomena accompanied by 
consciousness ; " and that " Here is the groundwork of 
the whole new school contained in the fact that con- 
sciousness manifests itself only in connection with nerve 
phenomena." This thought is variously reiterated 
throughout this class of writers. 

Without entering into the question whether there is 
ever any consciousness without nerves, I raise the con- 
verse question, whether there are any nerves without con- 
sciousness. Most of my readers will doubtless be ready 
with an inconsiderate answer in the affirmative, that 
they exist in sleeping and dead animals. " But, we have 
seen them." Ah yes, but what did you see in seeing 
them ? A mode of yourself. You had a specific sensa- 
tion of vision, and if you touched them, you had a sen- 
sation of touch. Those very nerves, therefore, as well 
as everything else of sense, are themselves simply a 
mode of consciousness, subjective states. Nerves 
therefore are always connected with consciousness be- 
cause they are consciousness. This is the modern A B 
C of psychology. Nerves are a mode of consciousness, 
and so they are always one with consciousness and not 
merely " connected," as two different things. 

Psychology ought to generalize consciousness into two 
great classes — as the sensible and supersensible, and 
then it should never forget itself, but observe this as its 
essential method. 



I38 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Then the relations of these two great classes of sub- 
jective states becomes an intelligible and important 
question. It is really the great problem of modern psy 
chology. 

Our first step in solving the problem will be the dis- 
covery that ultimately the world is the product of the 
supersensible ego, because the former presupposes the 
latter as its subject, of which it is a conscious mode. 

Whatever our specialty in each, we must all admit 
that we never deal with anything but the phenomena of 
consciousness, and therefore we should never write or 
speak on any other assumption. We must be true to 
our deeper selves, to our admitted and most deliberate 
and careful analysis. 

Let it be added that a further very obvious duty next, 
will be to divide sensible phenomena into two great 
classes of the organic and extra organic, which has been 
done, and to note that with the organic we have a double 
consciousness, and only a single one with the inorganic. 
If I strike my body, I can both see and feel the blow ; 
but I only see, and don't feel (in the same way), any 
stroke beyond my organism, or beyond the reach of the 
nerves. This shows a law of double sensation con- 
nected with the nervous system, whence the body is 
called ego, thongh it is no more ego than any other sen- 
sation or sensible object. There is a different law of 
sensations connected with the organic complexus of sen- 
sations from that connected with the complexus of inor- 
ganic sensations. That is the great psychological line 
of discrimination between them. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 39 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ECONOMY OF SENSE. 

Whether there is any matter or not, apart from or 
other than spirit, it is very certain that there is a phe- 
nomenal world of sense, which is common to all known 
organic forms, from which all spring, and into which all 
are again dissolved. We do know that we are the sub- 
ject of experiences which we classify as organic 
and inorganic, and both classes contain an almost 
infinite number of sub varieties. The organic are tem- 
porary evolutions of the inorganic, and they are roughly 
classified as men, brute animals and vegetables. These 
are all facts of sense — experience. Considered simply 
as subjective states, they are not and cannot be illusory 
or deceptive ; for subjective states they certainly are. 
They are illusory only when they are misconceived to be 
what they are not, or to mean or indicate what they do 
not mean or indicate, and that illusion is only an unnec- 
essary opinion or inference of our own. 

But whence did this power come ? From the Infinite 
and Eternal, not by evolution, we think, but by creation. 
This is how it appears to one very fallible person. Be- 
cause he is known to be so fallible he knows he is not 
God, and he would be God if he were an evolution 
of God, for it is of the essential nature and conception 
of evolution that all change is of the form only, so that 



140 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

the substance remains one and the same. Creation, on 
the other hand, is the causing of a new and additional 
substantive (finite) reality and force, a finite addition to 
the sum of being. Thus has God created man and his 
powers of thought, feeling and action. 

This power of generating a sensible world and modi- 
fying its forms is therefore ultimately of God, the effect 
of his creative purpose. But man's generation and modi- 
fication of the sensible world is not a creation. It is 
only an evolution, a manifestation and variation of the 
forms of his God-given powers. 

As it is of God, it cannot be essentially evil but good. 
Its object and end must be good, and therefore, it must 
be good in its intrinsic nature. But as finite it is liable 
to perversion and wrong direction for a period and to 
some extent, but not so as to be unworthy of Infinite 
Good, which must secure that it shall not on the whole be 
injurious or useless. 

It is as subjective states purely that we are obliged to 
consider them. This is the sensible world, the world 
which men generally call matter, and if we call it mat- 
ter or reality we shall mean by it a mental reality, or 
mode of mind, and of our own individual mind. 

To the question, whence does this world of sense im- 
mediately come, there is but one immediate answer — our 
own mind. It cannot directly have any other source. 
Soap bubbles cannot have any other origin than soap and 
water. And thoughts and feelings cannot have any other 
direct source than their subject, the power which thinks 
and feels. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I4I 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE FUNCTION OF SENSE. 

This leads us to inquire into the function of the world 
of sense. This world must have some mission, and that 
mission must be good, good in the highest meaning of 
the word, as intelligence and goodness must conceive it. 
This must be the promotion of intelligence and good- 
ness in the finite mind. It cannot be anything else or 
less, judging a priori from the presupposition of its ulti- 
mate origin in God. Let us, therefore, study it in this 
light, and see how it promotes this end, by what meth- 
ods and laws. We shall discern the practical obligations 
which grow out of this, and thus the duties of our 
mortal life will be unfolded, and the laws of well-being 
forever will become manifest. 

Material or sensible forms are valuable and important 
as direct symbols of finite spiritual realities. This we 
all recognize. There is something in the form and build 
and style, in the looks, which are called expressions, 
which tell us of a spiritual nature and disposition back 
of them. On this is built Physiognomy, Palmistry and 
other alleged methods of reading the invisible. When 
we descend into details, however, we are easily and fre- 
quently mistaken. But of the main principle there is 
never any question. The general difference in the sen- 
sible form of men and women, for instance, is clearly 
symbolic of their general difference of spiritual structure. 



142 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Still more striking is the difference between man and 
monkey as symbolized in their different physical struct- 
ure. Now as our organism is known to be the sensible 
symbol and manifestation of our supersensible being, 
nature and powers, so every other sensitive and self- 
conscious organism is a symbol of some supersensible 
being of a rank and character corresponding to the rank 
and form of the organic symbol. Thus, there must be 
living, sensitive, spiritual creatures, ranging and differ- 
ing from man down to the jelly-fish or still lower forms. 
And doubtless, beyond the world known to us there are 
innumerable different ranks of conscious beings, some of 
which are next to infinitely nobler than ourselves. 

It is unreasonable to suppose these ranks are eternally 
stationary. We discern that we ourselves are under the 
law of progress, both as individuals and as a race. We 
see it in our earthly life from infancy to old age, in which 
intelligence and spiritual life and beauty may be always 
on the increase. We see also very clearly in the light of 
the modern sciences of history, paleontology and an- 
thropology that while there have been local ebbs, the 
human race has been steadily improving, and the higher 
men rise the more they begin to see that this is the law 
of their existence, and at once their supreme duty and 
privilege. This gives the freshness of the dawn and 
the dew and inspiration of youth to their whole existence. 

Is the beneficent law of progress confined to us as men ? 
There is no principle which will justify us in answering 
in the affirmative. The same law must govern all the 
creatures of God. For all there is the prospect of an 
endless progress and elevation. The lowest will yet 
reach our level and transcend it. Hence, the probability 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 143 

that we have reached our present estate by successive 
evolutions from far lower conditions. There has been 
no death, except of forms. The sensible symbols have 
changed, some coming, changing and then giving place 
to others as indicative of unseen changes in the progres- 
sive spiritual reality, until the molusk finally emerges 
into the man. 

We see then the first great function of organic sensi- 
ble forms — to symbolize the grades, conditions and 
activities of finite supersensible individualities. By their 
help we can indirectly discern and know each other, and 
hold intercourse with each other. Without this we can- 
not imagine how we could have any mutually discrimi- 
nated individuality. The finite, it seems, must be imaged 
as having bounds and limitations, and this is effected by 
the self-projection of the sense-form, and for the same 
reason the Infinite can have no sense-form, but be eternal- 
ly and absolutely supersensible. 

Form is not to be confounded with matter, and all 
philosophers attest this. Form is apparently the neces- 
sary symbol of finite force. While every several form is 
mutable and temporary, there is an endless succession. 
Real forms are spiritual, and are but the modes in which 
finite powers exist and operate, and become mutually 
discriminated and manifest ; and they must therefore 
exist so long as there are ideas, or spiritual beings, in exist- 
ence, or force in operation. No war waged for their 
utter extinction can succeed. All finite things immedi- 
ately known to us are of some form or shape, or are 
associated with it. Our very thoughts are, for the most 
part, subject to the regulative laws of space and time, 
as conditions of their expression. 



144 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

What are the beauty and glory of the universe ? They 
are the immortal and spiritual force, or power, made man- 
ifest in visible and tangible shapes, by which that spirit- 
ual power attains expression, effectiveness and develop- 
ment. The forms of God's universe are not " dead mat- 
ter." They are alive, and instinct with energy, and are 
ever working in obedience to Spirit, because they are 
spiritual. They are the true genii of the old-time legend. 
By the use of the wise Merlin's mighty "spell of woven 
passes and waving hands" we can command their attend- 
ance, and endlessly vary their action; and we thus show the 
varied power, in diversified operation, which God has 
conferred upon us, and revealed in us. 

Form and Force are creation's universal counterparts, 
undivided and inseparable. Form is the foliage of 
beauty, the shield of protection, with which power is at 
once adorned and defended ; the channel of communica- 
tion, the lever and the fulcrum of action, by which it be- 
comes effective. Force gives their form and glory to 
sun and stars, and all their brilliant satellites, and it 
molds, as well as guides, the fleecy cloud and the fleeting 
shadow ; it rears the mountains in their forms of grand- 
eur, and shapes the hills into their gentler beauty. Valley 
and stream and woodland, sunny bank and shaded dell, 
are symbols expressive of unseen powers. Every grassy 
spike and lordly tree and delicately pencilled flower, 
every pebble and every gem, tell us of a force which 
determines their forms, and makes them the signs of an 
unseen beauty. In nature's fair and holy temple, form 
and finite power ever embrace each other, and, as one 
spiritual unit, they ever move in the service of their 
great Creator. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I45 

The operation of the same law is still more striking, 
when there is conscious animation. The form and plu- 
mage, the eye and voice of the bird, tell of the spirit which 
animates them, for and by which they exist, and without 
which they dissolve. So all human excellence, all the 
known power and virtue of our spiritual nature seeks to 
embody itself in form, and to some extent succeeds. 
Abolish pedagogical forms, and restraints and education 
would be impossible, and all literary institutions a myth. 
The peculiar spiritual energy of man, the most royal prin- 
ciple and agency, the ethereal flame which burns in 
human action, must have its symbol, its outward expres- 
sion and impersonation; without which, as known to us, 
its power is destroyed, its glory vanished. Except One, 
perhaps no being is entirely disembodied ; and even of 
that One it is clear that we know nothing except from His 
works ; that is, from the ideas and forms through which 
he has displayed his being and attributes. And, of man 
himself, it is also clear from Scripture that his highest 
perfection is to be attained only when he has developed 
a spiritual body. 

Religion, too, must have its forms, and these will also 
differ according as the religious thought and feeling differ. 
These different thoughts and feelings will necessarily seek 
a different form of expression. Some of them demand 
that the whole outward style and tenor be serene and 
elevated, blending harmony and beauty, like the glory 
and melody of a summer evening. They can utilize the 
well-trained choir, and the swelling tones of a vast organ, 
filling with mighty music choir, and nave, and isle, and 
niche, up to the fretted arch and groined ceiling of the 
great cathedral. Thus, while all nature seemed to inspire 



I46 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

the words he uttered, Milton's Adam in the garden might 
well be supposed to address his Maker in the majestic 
language the epic poet ascribes to him : 

" These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good, 
Almighty! thine this universe frame, 
Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then. 
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, 
Breathe soft and loud ; and wave your tops ye pines, 
With every plant, in sign of worship move; 
Hail universal Lord ; be bounteous still 
To give us only good ; and if the night 
Has gathered aught of evil, or concealed, 
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark." 

Another office of the world of sense is the promotion 
of discipline and development, intellectual and moral. 
This is effected by observing and utilizing the laws of the 
sense-world. These laws have a good intent and may 
have a good result. They are the involuntary action of 
the inferior portion of our own minds ; and of course they 
ought to be studied and wisely followed. This cannot 
but bring good, because the result will be subjective 
harmony. The contrary course will by necessary con- 
sequence result in evil. The sense-world is neither to 
be ignored nor slighted, nor exalted to the supreme place, 
but used as a means to an end. 

The sense world serves as a grand system of symbo- 
lism to instruct and stimulate us in developing the spir- 
itual or supersensible life. All the care, the circumspec- 
tion, the endurance, the energy, and often the courage, 
requisite to physical good, are types of the same need 
for the attainment of spiritual good. All is mind, only 
different classes, higher and lower ranks ; and the lower 
rank is made, as it should be, subservent to the higher ; 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I47 

and this is the law of our duty representing them. We 
are perfectly clear in the great law ; but we still have 
a vail on the face of nature. 

There are great and appaling events in nature's his- 
tory, like storms, cyclones and earthquakes. There are 
corresponding outbreaks in human passion. It is hard 
to understand. Nature is a subjective state which men 
share in common or according to law ; and we may feel 
that we are very far removed from the fantastic or the 
truthless poetic, if there is any such thing, when we 
suggest that nature as a whole is but the aggregate ex- 
pression of the beauty and glory of goodness as well as 
the dark and awful and injurious self-hood which are re- 
vealed in the consciousness of man. 



I48 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

NO MORTAL MIND. 

Here we must pay our respects to " Mortal Mind," 
a personage of great and pompous pretentions. This is 
a modern creation, and whether its creator was a man 
or a woman is a vexed question in certain circles. From 
respect to my sisters I advise them to father it on the 
man, especially as they may find a good historic reason 
for so doing, if they will scan the evidence. According 
to the inspired authorities on the subject, this mortal 
mind has " neither beginning of life nor end of days ; " 
and yet he is not eternal, but mortal ; and he is so mor- 
tal that he has the shortest life ever was or can be, so 
short that it never existed a moment, never was and 
never will be. But this same inexistent mortal mind is 
the subject, source and cause of "all the evil that is done 
under the sun," whether among men, animals or the un- 
conscious world of sense — an infinite and horrible 
Frankenstein, which was, and is, and is not, and never 
was. 

In this system, mortal mind is absolutely diverse from, 
and utterly disconnected with, the real man, which is 
made in the image of God. This latter is unmistakably 
impeccable and infallible. It has no sin or error to 
conquer, and its life bears absolutely no practical relation 
to all the battling and chaos of mortal mind, which is un- 
real and counterfeit. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I49 

This stultifies all thought, and contradicts all exper- 
ience. It is the sheerest nonsense to say that the same 
one mind cannot sometimes be right and at other times 
wrong, wise here, and foolish there, cannot sin and repent 
and reform. We are all conscious of all these things ; 
though as to the reformation, some of us are sufficiently 
slow. Allow the facts of consciousness, and then we 
have an individual continuous unity amid multitudi- 
nous modal variations, good and evil ; and a rational 
contest is going on within us for the supremacy of the 
good and true. Now we are intellectually adjusted alike 
to sense and reason and moral effect and fear and hope. 

We are thus brought also into harmony with scripture, 
which always speaks of man as capable of both good and 
evil, as often sinking from good into evil, and rising from 
evil into good ; and it is the same race and the same indi- 
vidualities thereof, which it describes as now wallowing 
in the mire of sin and various forms of degrading errors, 
and finally triumphing in victory over them all in heaven, 
by the grace of God. It is on this account that they 
give grateful acknowledgments, and most fervent and 
lofty praise to the Almighty for the goodness and grace 
which he showed to them, to their own very selves in 
their sad and low estate. 

Except on this principle there is no reality and signi- 
cance in the psalms, with their utterances of joy and 
sorrow, of struggles and victory, of fear and hope, and of 
gratitude towards God ; or in any of the scripture 
declarations of expectation, that they, the very persons 
who were now suffering, and painfully conscious of many 
imperfections, will, by divine help, at length overcome 
the world, the flesh and the devil, and enjoy the sol- 



I50 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

dier's rest after many hard-fought battles. Thus all the 
heroic saints have lived, and in the inspiration of this 
celestial light they have passed away ; and the same 
spirit animates all the good of our own day. 

Mortal mind is naught. There is indeed no mortal 
mind. Mind is all immortal. It is the creature of God, 
who makes nothing to perish, but all for immortality. 
All transient forms are modes of an immortal spirit which 
is ever working out a higher condition through these 
changes. All is mind, and all mind is immortal ; and all 
transient forms, whether of sense or supersense, are all 
the same immortal spirit-substance, working out the 
fulfilment of its divinely appointed end. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 151 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

REALITY OF SENSIBLE PHENOMENA AND MORTAL 
THOUGHT. 

The exposition which we have given of matter as be- 
ing a mode of mind, one of the lower forms or states of 
mind, relieves us from some undesirable consequences 
resulting logically from the novel theory that it is pure 
nothing, or that it is pure illusion. 

If matter is pure nothing, so that it is not even a state 
of consciousness, it is wholly unknown and there is no 
meaning or rational or sensible content to our words ; 
so that the less we say of it and of healing or conquering 
or destroying it, the better. This has been noticed 
before. Logically, it is absolutely fatal to the theory, 
because it is self-destructive by being self contradictory. 

There are some practical objections, which are also 
logical objections, and which are already embodied in 
some very bad practical results. 

One of these is that the theory that matter is nothing, 
or only an illusion, is unfriendly to human life, and to all 
its holiest relations and obligations. If what men call 
matter is nothing, or only an illusion, then surely it 
has no sacredness or dignity, nor any rights which any 
one is bound to respect. Any human body, or form, 
or work, may be treated just as it may suit our passion, 
taste or inclination. Certainly we cannot wrong a noth- 



152 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

ing ; and to mar or destroy an illusion cannot be any sin. 
What if you do divide friends, as mere human beings, 
or as embodied or symbolized in organic forms ; what 
if you do destroy the peace of families by lust or by 
scandal and heart burning insinuations ; what if you do 
interfere with all their honest and useful schemes of 
domestic comfort or social happiness ; what if you do sap 
the common faith in human virtue, or its intrinsic dig- 
nity and immortal influence : what if you are absoletely 
indifferent to the happiness and well-being of every sen- 
sible creature and treat all of them to the utmost ex- 
tent of your power with every species of injustice and 
cruelty ; it is all nothing in process and result, or it is 
a mere illusion, which you can never harm. A con- 
science based on such a theory can never know any 
wrong. It will be in perfect keeping with this theory to 
affirm that there is no sin and never was or can be, 
and of course, that therefore God himself can never 
know it ; for how can he know the non-existent. All 
moral principles, swasives and motives are withered at 
the root, and the universal moral economy, as well as 
reason and common sense, are involved in total ruin. 

No one, perhaps, carries out the theory to its logical 
issue in practice. But I fear that there are some few who 
carry it out as far as they can or dare, whose good is 
only seeming, "a pure illusion," the means of an entirely 
selfish gratification, a spider's invitation to the fly to 
enter its parlor web, or the crocodile's open mouth 
inviting small creatures to rest and feed upon its ex- 
posed tongue, that they may be suddenly enclosed 
and devoured. We have heard not whispers only, but 
positive affirmation to the effect that secret and com- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 153 

bined efforts against the health and life of persons has 
been defended on the ground that said persons are not a 
reality. This discloses to us the essential spirit of a 
metaphysical Mandeville ; and it makes a religion of its 
metaphysics, as metaphysics without the spirit of philos- 
ophy always has done ; and its religion has always been 
its crowning evil, the final evolution of its baleful quality. 
The comfort is that such things are only mortal thought. 

This doctrine also logically generates a temptation and 
excuse for inveracity, signs of which we have seen in 
certain quarters. It allows us to practice the use of 
double en tendre without limit. The organic form is 
nothing; and when we assail it, or belie any of its action, 
we do not assail or belie the man. We can say we will 
not seek another person's barm, though we are opposing 
with all our power or cunning his organic action, com- 
fort or honor. We may betray them, seduce them, de- 
fraud them conscientiously, and solemnly swear we love 
them and are " treating " them for their good. Possibil- 
ities of this kind very readily become facts, as the his- 
tory of error has abundantly shown. 

Now, adopt a true Philosophical Realism, that all sen- 
sible phenomena are subjective states, modes of mind, 
then all the normal forms of human life are indefinitely 
elevated in dignity and worth. The body of man is then 
a great and marvelous concretion of spiritual force ; and 
the entire visible universe and all sensible things are also 
spiritual. Consequently all human relations, duties, and 
capabilities are correspondingly exalted and sanctified. 
Spiritual in their nature, they are normal and spiritual in 
their proper means and end. They have, therefore, their 
laws of liability, of capability and action and obligation, 



154 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

and the capability and obligation are of a very noble and 
elevated rank. They lay hold of immortality, of arch- 
angelhood and of God. Faithfully followed, they are the 
harbingers of all conceivable, and even inconceivable 
benefaction, felicity and glory. They are the lower 
rounds of a ladder which is forever rising into brighter 
and sweeter atmospheres. They are links in a divine 
and holy chain which binds God and all his creation 
into a unity of saphire glory, all conscious, and as 
happy as it is bright ; and all lower forms and activities 
take on an augmented dignity from their perceived rela- 
tion to the ulterior issues which thay promote and in 
which they will be ultimately lost. 

We are hence saved from the unparalelled folly of 
making a vacuum between mortal and immortal mind. 
It is strictly true, as has been said, that in reality there 
is no mortal mind. All mind is immortal. Why should 
God create a thing to be destroyed ? His work standeth 
forever. It would be unworthy of him to create ought 
which contains the elements of its own annihilation, or 
that does not contain an essential power of self-perpet- 
uation and progressive appreciation and reflection of the 
glory of its author. We are therefore very strong in the 
assurance and very positive in the affirmation that there 
is no mortal mind. This conviction and assertion is an 
affair of reason. It seems utterly unreasonable to think 
otherwise, if we hold to the existence of God as an in- 
finitely perfect being, and that man is his creature and 
in his likeness. His creatures, it would seem, must be 
all spiritual like himself, though infinitely inferior. From 
the standpoint of a pure and lofty spiritual Theism we 
can, a priori, never infer the dualism of matter and spirit. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 55 

We must surely infer that every creature of such a being 
is a spirit, a pure and simple entity analogous to his 
own. 

But while we have good ground for the conclusion that 
there is no " mortal mind," we know that there is such a 
thing as " mortal thought." Of this as a fact we are 
hourly and momentarily conscious. We are perfectly 
aware that thoughts come and go, and some of them stay 
a very short time and return no more. We are all the 
subjects of beliefs and feelings and notions which are 
only mental flashes or like puffs of dull and offensive 
smoke. These mental states are mortal enough : but 
their source and subject, the conscious mind, is immor- 
tal. It exists the same individual through all these 
changes of successive phenomena, and will exist forever 
the source and subject of innumerable other mental 
phenomena which shall come and fulfill their mission, 
and then give place to others, for which they have pre- 
pared the way. So there is not only such a thing as 
mortal thought now, but there always will be. To all 
eternity the mind must think ; and as finite, it cannot 
always think the same thought. It must have new ex- 
periences, and learn new ideas from experience, and a 
higher power of thinking thence develope. Its thoughts 
must be forever changing, and should be always changing 
for the better ; since, as we have seen, progress is the 
supreme law of finite existence and action. 

Conceiving mortal thought as temporary modes of an 
immortal mind or thinker, we not only have a psychology 
which answers to the facts of consciousness, but we also 
preserve a rational and moral continuity of all individu- 
ality. Action and duty become significant, and all the 



I56 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

acknowleged relations of the anterior to the subsequent 
become clear and luminous. He who prays that God 
will not "remember the sins of his youth," which he has 
long since abondoned, is the same mind that then sinned, 
else the prayer would be nonsense : and in the everlast- 
ing hereafter just in proportion as the same mind is 
able to look back and remember and understand how 
God has been merciful and gracious and made all things 
become to him a source of moral discipline and spiritual 
elevation, can he then more fully discern and adore the 
unfolding perfection of God. This is how the Epistles 
of the Apostles and the Apocalypse represent the re- 
deemed in heaven as having been once in sin and error 
and much suffering and rejoicing with adoring gratitude 
to God that they have by divine assistance gained the 
victory over all these things, and in their own selves, 
who once were so different, are enjoying a sweet and 
perfect felicity. 

It is only in this union of the permanent and transient, 
of mortal thought and immortal mind in the same indi- 
vidual, that there can be any such things as history or 
biography. The history of the man is the history of the 
same man ; and it is a history of him only because he 
has passed through various conditions, experiences and 
forms of life and action which are now no more, else 
they would not belong to history. It is only on this 
principle that there can be any moral or intellectual pro- 
gress, any possible improvement from past experience. 
This principle is the essence and soul and primary foun- 
dation of all educational ideas, movements and institu- 
tions. Without it the nursery has no relation to the 
school, and neither of them has any relation to subse- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 57 

quent life ; and for the same reason this life can have no 
practical bearing upon any other. We are, therefore, 
not made up of two minds or souls, one mortal and the 
other immortal. But the one mind or soul has a succes- 
sion of thoughts, and it doubtless has an endless suc- 
cession of bodies, symbolic of its changes, whether for 
the better or worse. 

In the light of our exposition, we see the egregious 
mistake of pronouncing sensible phenomena to be beliefs. 
Belief is not a sensible phenomenon at all, but a super- 
sensible process ; and nothing but the utter absence of 
all literary sense could allow the one to be put for the 
other. To be conscious of a physical pain or pleasure is 
not a belief, but a sensation, an experience, a knowledge, 
and I may then believe, if I choose, that they are both 
caused by eating mince pie, or that they are caused by 
"malicious mesmerism." 

If one class of sensible phenomena are beliefs, the 
same must be affirmed for all. A diseased heart or lung 
is no more a belief than a sound heart and lung. A 
broken leg is no more a belief than an unbroken leg. 
A church, a steamboat, or a horse-car and a hospital are 
a belief as much as all the pains and infirmities and 
diseases which the hospital contains. Call them all be- 
liefs or call none of them beliefs. They are all equally 
real to sense and as sensible experience ; and that is all 
there is of them. Their reality consists in this. A 
sound and an unsound limb are equally subjective states. 
The one is more real than the other only in that it con- 
forms to the law of harmony more than the other. The 
real in distinction from the unreal is that which coincides 
with a possible universal harmony, while the unreal does 



I58 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

not. The unreal does not conform to the laws of some 
of our senses or the senses of other people. We have a 
visual phenomenon, and on examination we find it does 
not answer to the sense of touch, and at once we pro- 
nounce it an optical illusion. The real is that which 
answers to all the senses. But a diseased organ will do 
this just as much as a healthy one. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 59 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

INTERPRET, NOT CONTRADICT, THE SENSES. 

Here we are led to consider the proper method of 
treating the senses. We have already done something 
toward rescuing them from contempt and disrespect. 
We need further to rescue them from perversion. We 
have seen that they are sources of knowledge, and sym- 
bols of supersensible realities. We propose now to show 
that they are not to be treated as false witnesses, but to 
be cross-examined in all honesty to see what their testi- 
mony is worth. 

We do not recommend, with some, that we should 
"contradict the senses," and " pronounce the senses false 
and a lie." That can never practically be done. The 
senses will assert theselves in spite of all the theories of 
men. Whatever their theories, men will find their bodies 
subject to the laws of gratification. Contradict the ver- 
dict of your sense as you may, this fact will remain ; and 
to contradict it is to belie a fact of experience, which is 
the very base of all knowedge. Such a course does not 
characterize sane men, much less scientific men. 

The fundamental fact is that the senses never err, be- 
cause they never affirm anything beyond their own exist- 
ence and action. What we call a pain in the head is 
simply a complex consciousness of a certain fact of ex- 
perience. While it lasts it is what it is, and only false- 



l6o CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

hood can contradict it. This exposition stands good for 
all the senses and all their action or experience. 

It is only when we pass from the senses to inferences 
from them that error becomes possible. A person walking 
through a cemetery, sees a white-sheeted form stalk across 
his path, apparently headless, and it carries a ball in front 
of the size of a moderate pumpkin or human head. 
This may be a veritable experience of the senses, as was 
Ichabod Crane's sight of the horseman in " Sleepy 
Hollow." If now it is inferred, as it was by Ichabod, 
that the object seen was a ghost, the disembodied spirit 
of some dead man carying its head in its hand, then we 
may be in error, and probably are. In the latter case our 
reasoning is at fault. We must therefore, in scientific 
rigor say that our senses are always right, while our 
reasoning is ofte?i wrong, that, therefore, we should never 
contradict the human senses, and that we are often 
obliged to contradict human reasoning, — else this argu- 
ment were needless. 

It is our duty to examine the experiences of sense and 
their relation to each other, and then their relation to 
supersensible powers. This in a nutshell constitutes the 
whole philosophy of mental healing ; and what is far more, 
it is the soul and essence and method of Christian Pneu- 
matopathy. This would give us the cause or uniform 
connections between sensible phenomena, and the influ- 
ence of body on the mind, and the influence of mind on 
the body. This would cover all theories of mental heal. 
ing and an infinity of other things besides, when carried 
out in detail, which will require all eternity. 

The dogma that we should " Learn to contradict the 
senses " is only the unripe fruit of that quality of the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. l6l 

human mind, undisciplined by scientific training, by 
which it is prone to fly from one extreme to another, and 
so merely make an exchange of errors. It is erroneous 
and debasing to make the senses our chief authority and 
final end. On the other hand, to give them no place at 
all in the economy of existence, and to pronounce them 
universal liars, is surely going to an absurd and injurious 
extreme on the other side. We ought to do neither. 
There is "a golden mean." 

What we need to do is to study the function and end 
of the sensible economy, and then to act accordingly. 
It must have some office and final cause, and these must 
be ascertained. 

There seems to be an effort at this, and this is sup- 
posed to be attained and expressed, in the theosophic 
dogma, that "from the senses to the supersensible we are 
always to reason by the law of contraries and opposites." 
This is quite striking, and it has a taking air for those 
who are metaphysically inclined and who have little or no 
scientific and philosophic training and discipline. The 
rule is clear and comprehensive, and apparently easily 
carried out, judging from one or two selected examples. 
Hence this and other such theosophical notions have 
obtained dominion over many minds who might have be- 
come philosophers or scientists had they been properly 
trained before they became enthralled by these " glitter- 
ing generalities," which are only light by excessive dark, 
just the opposite of Milton's description of the skirts of 
Deity. There are relations in which this maxim may be 
made to produce a fine oratorical effect. All sensible 
things are unstable and transient. The spiritual universe 
is fixed and everlasting. As the author of the Epistle to 



1 62 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

the Hebrews finely says : " The things which are seen 
are temporal — the things which are unseen are eternal." 
The material universe is the sphere of irrational and non- 
moral forces : — The spiritual universe is the sphere of 
the rational and moral forces. Sense is necessarily finite. 
Spirit is Infinite. 

But we shall soon reach the end of such possible con- 
trasts ; and when we begin the search, we shall rapidly 
find a vast number of direct comparisons and analogies 
between the sensible and the supersensible, and that it is 
in this line where our chief stimulus and instruction lies. 
Sensible light is the analogue of spiritual knowledge and 
insight, and the pleasure and power they give. Sensible 
darkness is the symbol of spiritual darkness. There are 
sensible pleasures which are good, and sensible pleasures 
which are evil ; just as there are good and evil pleasures 
which are supersensible. The sense world has its laws 
and the supersensible world has its law, so that in all 
things we may reason by analogy from one to the other 
to some extent. These analogies are so close, so con- 
stant and perfect that the same set of phrases which de- 
scribe the sensible are also used familiarly to describe 
the supersensible. "Let us see" says the blind man, 
and with no sense of humor, much less of incongruity, 
so completely analogous are sense-sight and mental sight 
universally considered to be. The affirmation of blind- 
ness is more frequent relative to the mind than the sense, 
and for the most part it is only by the connection that it 
can be known to which of the two classes of faculties the 
phrase refers. In all such cases, which are innumerable, 
it would be ridiculous to apply the law of opposites and 
contraries. We should then have to infer that because 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 163 

there is sense light, there is no spiritual light ; that as 
there is sense darkness there is no spiritual darkness ; 
that because there is sensible health and pleasure, there 
is no spiritual health and pleasure ; also that there is sen- 
sible disease, (at least "in belief") that is proof of spirit- 
ual health and pleasure ; that as sense is in perpetual 
flux, the supersensible world is at an eternal stand still, 
with never the slightest change, variation, succession of 
thought or feeling, or the acquisition of any new knowl- 
edge or experience. This is not only a contradiction of 
the senses, but of all reason and all experience of the 
super-sensible order. 

It is also a great fallacy to charge all fallacies on the 
senses. Preach against the subjection of the entire life 
to sense, but allow sense to have a legitimate place and 
a veracious affirmation in subordination to spirit. We 
are not to "forget the body" in order, as some enjoin, to 
become spirit. Spirit should forget nothing, should learn 
and remember all it can, and then make use of all things 
for its own instruction and enlargement. Only a mad man 
can forget his body, or fail to feel its limitations ; and a 
wise man will note its leading qualities and characteristics, 
and study its laws, which show the proper method of 
using the body. 

It appears to me extraordinary that so able a man as 
my honered co-laborer, Dr. Evans, should deliberately 
utter, and for years maintain such things as the follow- 
ing : "As our senses never tell the truth, but affirm that 
which is the direct opposite of the reality, we are 
always to declare in opposition to the sensuous appear- 
ance, and steadfastly adhere to it, in regard to our 
malady, that it is not disease, but health, not pain, but an 



164 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

excess of pleasure." Now if "the senses never tell the 
truth but affirm the direct opposite of the reality," it 
follows that " we are always to declare in opposition to 
the sensuous appearance, and steadfastly adhere to it, in 
regard to our " health as well as " in regard to our mal- 
ady," that it is not health, but disease," not pleasure, but 
an excess of pain ; not good but evil. If sense is a 
"uniform " liar, always asserting just the opposite of the 
truth and fact, then we are always to reverse its testi- 
mony in order to have the truth, and affirm disease and 
pain whenever sense affirms health and happiness. Thus 
we gain nothing for healing, since we lose as much as we 
gain. We only present a short-sighted and absurd dog- 
ma, as a new discovery of great value to mankind. 

It is not any relief to pain, or the destruction of dis- 
ease, to locate them in "the astral soul " or the psychical 
body. They are not thereby carried beyond the sphere 
of consciousness ; and consciousness in all its forms is 
the known ego. This ego is ego, is the same one indi- 
vidual being, in whatever conscious form it is self-mani- 
fest, whether the rational soul " or nous " or spirit, or the 
astral soul, or the corporeal organism. The ego covers 
all. In all we equally say I. It is I who feel whatever 
name you give to the alleged location or source of the 
feeling. This ego is neither tripple nor dual, except in 
its modes. It is the same individual substance in all 
these modes. If any of it is God, it is all God. The 
simple truth is, that we are endowed with different 
classes of powers, a power of thinking, and feeling and 
acting in different ways — in sensible ways and super- 
sensible ways. The one ego is the subject of these va- 
rious experiences and activities. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 165 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM, THE LOGICAL BASIS OF PNEU- 
MATOPATHY. 

In order to mental healing the body, as being itself 
spiritual, must scientifically be brought under the law of 
mind or spirit. Here, as we have seen, materialism and 
the dualism of matter and spirit stand in the way ; and 
of these two, dualism is the worst. Materialism has a 
sort of scientific unity. It can study the laws of matter 
and say they run up into such fine and subtle forms that 
they are then called mind, and that these finer and sub- 
tler forms are the higher and the more potent, working 
downward on the grosser corporeality. This is simple, 
consistent, and so far, straightforward, and has some 
ground in science. Hence, this theory of healing is nat- 
urally very popular. But its ultimate atheistic conclusion, 
and its implicit denial of constant personal identity, and 
all moral principle, are its capital condemnation. If gross 
matter contains all the quality and potency of life, and 
evolves from its grosser forms all the finer and nobler 
qualities known as mind, then we have no need of the 
hypothesis of God, as La Place said. The material uni- 
verse is the all in all. If we are nothing more than a 
peculiar congeries of material atoms, then as these 
atomic connections are always changing, we have no con- 
stant or abiding individuality. We are like the stream, 



l66 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

in perpetual flux. The ego of any one moment is not 
the ego of any other moment. The theory as well as the 
sensible fact in that case contradicts the testimony of 
super-sensible consciousness. 

Dualism divides the forces of God and the universe. 
It renders perfect harmony impossible, for the law of 
matter is not naturally subject to the law of mind, neither, 
indeed, can be. Two opposite substances and forces 
with their respective opposite sets of laws, necessarily 
eventuate in discord and strife ; and only by some arti- 
ficial arrangement can they be brought into co-operation, 
and then it will be only partial and uncertain. The sim- 
plicity of a universal and all comprehending conception 
with its sublime impressiveness and convincing force are 
entirely destroyed. 

While we discard materialism and dualism as unrelig- 
ious and unphilosophical, we have already admitted that 
those who hold to those theories may be good healers, in 
spite of their false theory ; because while their theory as 
a whole, is inconsistent and false, it contains some ele- 
ments of truth in virtue of which they heal, and of their 
healing they have a very lame explanation, so that men- 
tal healing on their theory can never attain universal 
dominion, nor widely extended acceptance and influence. 
It is too lame and deformed to travel and win regard. 

Still we are obliged in scientific and logical rigor to 
add that this healing is effected, not so much in accord- 
ance with their theory, as in spite of it. They have an 
element which helps them, but this element is practically 
and logically opposed by the element of an alleged 
matter different from and opposite to spirit. Only the 
doctrine which affirms solely one kind of substance, 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 167 

spirit, gives a logical unity and consistency, and so 
enables the whole mind to act with unimpeached vigor 
and thence command the conviction of the thinking 
world. 

This makes mental healing seem infinitely more natu- 
ral. The mind in this case simply operates on itself. 
It does not have to travel beyond itself in order to operate 
on the body, since it is but a lower mode of mind, which 
should be ruled by the higher mode or form of power. 
In such healing we do not have to reverse the action of 
a different and opposing substance relative to ourselves. 
We have only to apply our own powers to ourselves, to 
bring them all into harmonious action, and thence healthy 
and happy action. 



1 68 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



PAET SIXTH. 



PNEUMOPATHY IN RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES, ES- 
PECIALLY PSYCHOLOGY, PHYSIOLOGY AND 
THERAPUTICS AND RELIGION. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

SPIRIT AND SPIRITS. 

There is a class of people who have laid down some 
laws and conditions of mental healing which have no 
foundation in reason or fact. They thus obstruct alike 
the rational study and intelligent practice of the great 
healing power, besides making the theory unnecessarily 
complex. We ought, therefore, to remove them as 
quickly as possible. 

One of these is the allegation that there is only one 
Spirit, God, and that there are no finite spirits or souls. 
I have in the past been indisposed to assail this and some 
other dogmas allied with it for fear of engendering a 
contention in which there is " only a differnce of words." 
If they all admit the existence of what is equivalent to 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 69 

spirits or souls, then they only introduce a novelty in the 
use of English terminology. If they allow that there are 
finite individualities, spiritual and self-conscious, then 
they allow all that is ever meant by human or finite 
spirits or souls. They have introduced no new thought. 
They have only arbitrarily and violently endeavored to 
wrench from common use two very useful and necessary 
words in our mother tongue. This is a serious evil. 
The English speaking people will not allow their vernac- 
ular to be thus robbed. The spiritual reality which con- 
stitutes our individual human and finite peculiarity, they 
will persist in denominating a spirit or a soul, because 
they have no other words so good and easy and popular, 
and so vitally rooted in the world's thought. 

If these people mean to deny the existence of any 
spiritual and finite individualities, then we take issue with 
them as guilty of fatal and fundamental error. They 
contradict all conscious and all moral conviction, which 
at every step pronounce these to be realities, and that 
there are certain relations and duties growing out of 
them ; and it is equally clear that they contradict all the 
teachings of the New Testament, and the essential por- 
tions of the Old Testament, which affirm that God has 
created men, which is not true if there are no men or if 
the men so-called are eternal, or God himself. A base- 
less pantheism and empty phenomenalism like this must 
be excluded from any theory of mental healing which is 
destined to conquer the world's best thought and com- 
mand its intelligent conviction. Christians of every 
name will generally consider such a notion as a burlesque 
on Christianity, rather than the science of Christianity, 
and they will be right. 



I^O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Besides, if there is no human spirit or soul, where is 
the seat of disease and evil ? It is declared by these 
people that there is no sensation in matter, and that 
there is no matter, that mind only is conscious. Now if 
there is only one Mind, the Infinite, that must be the 
seat of disease, the supposition of which is atheistic and 
self-contradictory. Evil, error, illusion and beliefs are 
thoughts and modes of mind, not of the Infinite Mind, 
but, therefore, of finite minds. There must be finite 
minds which are peccable and fallible, the source and 
seat of error and evil; and of all this, we are thoroughly 
conscious. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I/I 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ON KNOWING THE FORMS OF DISEASE. 

Another of these erroneously supposed elements of 
the philosophy of Christian Healing is that we must not 
examine the forms and symptoms of evil. It is to be 
allowed and to be affirmed with much emphasis, that we 
must not dwell in sense or thought on any form of evil till 
we are fascinated and conquered by it as a thing of seated 
and enthroned power. We must look away from it to its 
all conquering opposite, which must thus be brought to 
replace the evil, as the real and rightful potent there. 

But we always need to know the enemy we have to 
deal with, the form in which he comes, the method and 
means which he follows and uses. I am painfully aware 
how deeply this is opposed to the earlier and cruder ex- 
positions of mental healing. It is, however, clear that 
I am in accord with common sense and all the processes 
of modern science. We must not be incognizant of a 
malady so as not to know whether it is a broken bone, a 
sprained muscle, a pistol shot, or a congested brain, or 
lung, or a form of catarrh, or any other of the numerous 
ailments which assail the human body. That is merely 
to put a premium on ignorance and make a fatal discount 
on science and all intelligence. This, too, we are sorry 
to say, is the manifest drift of a certain class who have 
claimed to be the extra pure mental healers. They have 



172 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

vituperated science, and done their utmost to stop all 
reading, aud to shut out all observations of facts, and all 
knowledge of everything but their own dogmas ; and 
they have denounced those who have differed from them 
with passionate vehemence, and with much of the ran- 
cor of mediaeval times. 

Progress never abandons or ignores essential mental 
processes or the results of their past operation ; and while 
it brings into greater prominence simple and comprehen- 
sive principles, it generally differentiates the processes in- 
to greater multiplicity. It is in this line that the advanced 
movement of Pneumatopathy should be expected to pro- 
ceed. It must be an addition to, rather than a suppres- 
sion of, the past. It must organize the past under a 
higher principle, and so modify the past in conformity 
with this higher principle. We need, therefore, to know 
the form and physical and mental connections of the 
malady, and then relate them all scientifically with the 
pneumatic healing agency. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 73 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

HEALTH OF SENSE RELATIVE TO THE SUPER-SENSIBLE 

LIFE. 

Health is the harmonious operation of all interact- 
ing laws. In these days no one can make light of law, 
which is the regular mode in which phenomena occur 
and recur. That there is such an order, both in the 
sensible and super-sensible worlds, no one now ever 
doubts. Miracles and even ghosts are now universally 
made subject to law, in accordance with law, various 
forms of force may cross each other like two passing steam- 
ships or locomotives ; or they may move in harmony like 
the globes of an orrery. In the harmonious action con- 
sists health, wholeness of body and mind. 

This total wholeness, however, does not always nec- 
essarily go together. There may be a health of some of 
the parts when all the parts ars not harmoniously related. 
Some members of the body may not be healthy when 
other parts are all right, except as they are affected by 
sympathy or by the false action of the other members. 
So the body may be diseased when the mind is quite 
sound, and a mind insane may be associated with 
a body quite sound. We are indeed reminded of the 
familiar adage, " A sound mind in a sound body." But 
this is like many other round maxims, only a partial 
truth ; or an ideal behind which the real distantly lags, 
faltering. The union of a sound mind and body of which 



1/4 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

this speaks is one of the very rarest of phenomena. Men 
are nearly always diseased in one or the other or both. 
But it is very certain that a sound body is not abso- 
lutely necessary to a sound mind. It is well known that 
some of the sweetest and most delicate and exquisitely 
balanced of minds, as well as some of the strongest 
of minds,have been chronic sufferers from some bodily 
malady ; and their very sufferings, nobly borne, have 
purified, refined and exalted their entire character. Of 
this, examples are too numerous to require citation. 
Lord Macauley never did do better work than when he 
was the conscious victim of a wasting and fatal disease. 
Robert Hall suffered all his life as few men have ever 
suffered ; and yet no more exquisitely balanced prose 
of a lofty and sustained order of sentiment, it is gener- 
ally agreed, is found in any language, insomuch that 
Dugald Stewart affirmed that " he combined the beauties 
of Johnson, Addison and Burke." The sufferings of 
Heine were intense and long continued, and while he 
was not a sweet character or a judicial mind, he saw 
clearly and uttered incisively whatever he wanted to see 
and to utter, and he uttered it with exquisite literary 
polish and perfection, even though it were filled with 
moral and spiritual venom ; and the evil of his writings 
did not begin with his bodily sufferings and trace to that 
their source. To cut the matter short by coming to the 
most famous philosophical writer of our times, Herbert 
Spencer, we all know that his bodily weakness and ner- 
vous depression have diminished only the quantity, not 
the quality and the rounded wholeness of his produc- 
tions. Therefore, in spite of all our modern talk and 
proofs of the unity of body and mind, it is not true that 
a sound body is always necessary to a sound mind. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 75 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HEALING POWER OF THE HUMAN MIND. 

We determine the power and agency of anything by 
observing what follows its action. It is thus we meas- 
ure the force of the tempest, of steam, or exploding 
powder or dynamite. It is thus physicians have meas- 
ured the healing potency of their drugs. They have 
seen certain good effects follow their use in one or more 
cases, and they gladly attribute the change to the thing 
they have administered. It is possible that the change 
would have occurred without it, but the doubt is thrown 
on this side instead of the other. But there is another 
point of far more vital importance affecting this question. 
It is the possible influence of mind. It may be that in 
most or all these cases it was the mind which gave po- 
tency to the drug. We do know that in innumerable 
cases the mind has healed the body by taking bread 
pills and other such harmless things. Here, therefore, 
there clearly required a vast deduction to be made from 
the supposed potency of drugs, as the best physicians 
acknowledge. 

The following are clipped from The Medical Liber- 
ator : 

All medicines are poisonous. — Prof. St. John, M. D. 
Medicine is a great humbug. — M. Magendie, France. 
The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon. — John Mason 
Good.M. D., F. R. S. 



I76 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

Nine times out often our miscalled remedies are injurious to our 
patients. — Pro. Jamieson, Scotland. 

What we call medical science is a jumble of inconsistent opinions. 
— Dublin Medical Journal. 

The science of medicine is founded on conjecture and improved 
by murder. — Sir Astley Cooper. 

Physicians have hurried thousands to their graves who would 
have recovered if left to Nature. — Prof. Clark, N. Y. 

I fearlessly assert that in most cases our patients would be safer 
without a physician than with one. — Dr. Talmage, F. R. S. 

The "vital effects" of medicine are very little understood. It is 
a term employed to cover an ignorance. — Prof. Davis. 

Quackery. The chief cause of quackery outside of the medical 
profession is the real quackery in the profession. — Dr. Adam 
Smith. 

The popular medical system has neither philosophy or common 
sense to commend it to confidence. — Dr. Evans, F. R. C, London. 

Benjamin Waterhouse, M. D., after twenty years lecturing before 
the medical department of Howard University, said, " I am sick of 
learned quackery.' 

All our cogitations respecting the modus operandi of medicines 
are purely empirical. — Prof. Charles D. Meigs, Jefferson Medical 
College, Philadelphia. 

All our curative agents are poisons, and, as a consequence, every 
dose diminishes the patients vitality. — Prof. Clark. 

Four grains of calomel will sometimes kill an adult. — Prof. C. 
A. Gilman, N. Y. Medical College. 

From 30 to 60 grains of calomel have been given very young chil- 
dren for croup. — ProfAlonzo Clark, M. D., N. Y. Medical Col- 
lege. 

The poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, declared mankind had been 
drugged to death, and that the world would be better off if the con- 
tents of every apothecary shop were emptied into the sea, though 
the consequences to the fishes would be lamentable. 

Jacob Bigelow, M. D., president of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society, says : " The premature death of medical men brings with 
it the humiliating conclusion * * that medicine is still an ineffec- 
tual speculation." 

The older physicians grow the more skeptical they become of the 
virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 77 

powers of nature. — Prof. A. H. Stevens, M. D., New York College 
of Physicians and Surgeons. 

" I declare as my conscientious convictions founded on long ex- 
perience and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, 
surgeon, man midwife, chemist, apothecary, drugist, nor drug on the 
face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality 
than now prevails." — Dr. James Johnson. 

Of the lamented President Garfield, the London "Lancet," per- 
haps the most popular and most orthodox medical journal in the 
world, says : " The original injury was not fatal. * * His death 
was the result of the failure of surgery. This will place Bliss where 
he belongs, in the ranks of confidence men, charlatans and quacks. 

The administration of powerful medicine is the most fruitful 
cause of derangement of the digestion. — Prof. E. R. Peaslee, M. D., 
of the New York Medical College. 

Remedial agents act on the system in the same way as do the re- 
mote causes of disease. — Prof. Paine of the N. Y. University Medi- 
cal School, author of " Institutes of Medicine." 

The effects of medicine on the human system are, in the highest 
degree, uncertain, except, indeed, that they have destroyed more 
lives than war, pestilence and famine combined. — John Mason Good, 
M. D.,F. R. S. 

All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the 
same manner as do the poisons that produce disease. — Prof. Joseph 
M. Smith, M. D., New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

After long study and observation I have reached the 
conclusion that the utterances of the best and most cele- 
brated physicians are true, as indicated in these quota- 
tions. Physical medicine has no ruling principle which 
commends itself to reason or justifies itself in practice. 
Therapeutics is at the utmost remove from science, with 
which it has no alliance or affinity. It is a helter- 
skelter, higlety-piglety, hap-hazzard agglomeration of 
conceits, guesses and inventions. 

There is only one thing certain about the whole phar- 
macopoeia, whether it be called homiopathy or the other 
pathy, and that is, that it is composed wholly of poisons. 



178 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

It is the most marvelous legend of all the miracles that 
what would kill the strongest healthy body, will not hurt 
it, but do it good when it is weakened and prostrated by 
disease. In its weakest condition it can do more than in 
its strongest. It is in vain to reason against an " ortho- 
doxy " and a " standing order," but one cannot help 
observing that according to common-sense and every 
apparent rule of reason, the sick must be less able to re- 
sist poisons than the healthy ; that they should be 
treated with more delicacy rather than less ; that they 
cannot assimilate the indigestible with a weak stomach, 
any better than with a strong one. In short, the whole 
system is false and wrong and injurious, and physicians 
ought to acknowledge and abandon it. Poisons are 
poisons only, whether for the healthy or diseased, and 
should never be put into the human stomach or other- 
wise forced into the veinous circulation. 

There is also one clear effect of all these poisons — 
the depression of vitality. On their entrance nature 
exerts all its power for their expulsion, and the result is 
exhaustion. The vital force of the system which should 
have been working unimpeded to throw off the disease, 
has all been forced to employ itself to the utmost in ex- 
pelling this most deadly element of disease introduced 
by the doctor, and the result is inevitably damaging, and 
may be fatally so, as it often is. It must be a rare and 
accidental thing that any such medicine, so-called, can 
be administered without injury. Nay, it must be impos- 
sible for anything to radically change its own nature and 
action, and a poison must operate only as a poison. If 
its effect is good in one way, that is possible only be- 
cause it finds a way of doing some greater evil in another 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 179 

quarter. It must forever follow a law of evil compensa- 
tion. This law we can never escape by the use of pois- 
ons. There is but one way — to abandon their use 
entirely. Till this is done, medicine and physicians will 
be only breeders of disease, and as now, health will be 
the exception and not the rule, in civilized life. 

We should not, in opposing this hoary combination of 
medical superstition and charlatanry go to absurd ex- 
treme of denying any agency to these poisons, for in 
that case they would not be poisons. These inconsider- 
ate agitators say it is the living system only which acts, 
as proved by the fact that the dead stomach is not thus 
affected. The effect ought to be different on dead tissue 
from what it is on live tissue ; but prussic acid will cor- 
rode, though in different degrees, both dead and living 
stomachs. If these so-called medicines did not act at 
all, did not wield any force, nor produce any effect in the 
stomach, the stomach itself would act just the same in 
their presence as in their absence. Every agent varies 
its action according to its environments, and their action 
is always mutual and reactive. What we want is health- 
ful and not inactive or poisonous substances to be put in 
the stomach. 

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw an absolutely 
straight line of demarkation between these two methods. 
While nature knows no variations, she is infinitely va- 
rious and subtle ; and hence, what seem like exceptions 
are sometimes beneficial. In this undeveloped state 
many people are amphibious, and like the tadpole, 
neither air nor water will suit them as their exclusive 
element. If poison has been generated in the system, 
and needs to be expelled, and if the effort at expulsion 



l80 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

is inadequate, then a safe foreign substance which would 
generate an effective expulsive effort and which would 
carry with it all the rest that ought to go, might reason- 
ably be employed. So it would seem. But the necessity 
will be rare, and perhaps never. Never is the rule. 

As Pneumatopathy is healing by spirit, nothing else is 
pneumatopathy pure. Other things may be associated 
with it and may be utilized by it, such as nursing and 
hygiene, massage, sponging and bathing, brushing and 
rubbing, or wrapping in wet sheets, all of which we may 
co-operate with as pneumatopathists ; but they are not 
pneumatopathy. But pneumatopathy may preside over 
their use, if the operator sees fit. Here is the sphere 
for an admissable eclecticism under the supervision of 
pneumatopathy, with the sensible subordinated to the 
super-sensible, and everything as an handmaid to pure 
pneumatopathy, not as mistress or equal partner. 

The facts and attestations quoted above do not entitle 
us to say that the materia medica is all and always abso- 
lutely useless. In the present stage of human develop- 
ment, something in the shape of medicine is often nec- 
essary as an excitant to a healing action of the mind. 
Besides that, and further, it is scientifically verifiable 
and universally manifest also, that in the present stage, 
something must be taken into the stomach as a con- 
dition of organic life and health and vigor. This being 
allowed, there is no a priori argument against the sup- 
position that something so used or applied externally by 
an invalid may promote his recovery ; and whether this 
is a fact has to be ascertained by experiments carefully 
conducted. For myself, I have no doubt about this. 
But I have, on the other hand, little doubt that, as the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. l8l 

above testimonies confirm, the practice of physical medi- 
cine has done much harm, and vastly more harm than 
good. Deadly poisons have been constantly and freely 
used. Deadly we know them to be, whatever be the 
source of their power, and anything that can for the 
most part supercede their use harmlessly and with con- 
spicuously good effects will be an unspeakable boon to 
mankind. 

This great benefaction comes to us in the doctrine 
and power of Pneumatopathy or mental healing. We 
know that mind heals, and that a growing power of this 
kind is dawning on the world. We know the good 
effects which follow its action, and it is manifest that 
they can be attributed to nothing else than mind as their 
cause. 

The world's progress is in the line of the increasing 
ascendency of mind. Its relative power must become 
manifest in multifarious ways. The development of a 
mental healing power as scientifically explicable is one 
of the forms in exemplification of this law of progress. 

All through the ages a few men of exceptional endow- 
ments have exhibited this power, and they have thought 
it a special gift of God or the gods to them. Others 
have doubted all the "wonderful works," and have been 
perplexed to know how to explain well authenticated 
accounts. The scientific explanation is now dawning. 
On some of us it shines quite clearly, but not yet with 
meridian splendor. On some it has only come as the 
first and doubtful morning twilight, while others are still 
in total darkness. 

There are various classes of facts which conspire to 
show the controlling relation of the super-organic powers 



1 82 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

to the organic. It is well known that there are people 
who have all the vital organs of their body under the 
control of the will. We have known one lady who 
could blush at will ; another lady who could at any time 
appear deadly sick and faint away, and who often used 
the trick to frighten her husband into compliance. This 
was not merely the semblance of sickness, but it was as 
real as any other sickness, because it was the tempo- 
rary stoppage and derangement of the vital functions, 
which were caused and cured by the mind. We have 
known of a man who could render his flesh through the 
whole body rigid and hard, so that on being struck it 
would ring like metal, and make it apparently free from 
susceptibility to pain from any ordinary injury. It is 
also a well attested and authenticated fact that some 
men have the power of appearing to die. They have 
been known to assume that condition as a means of de- 
frauding insurance companies ; and in one such case the 
death remained a permanent fact. The man never re- 
covered. He proved to have the power to lay down his 
life but not to take it up again. In the other cases the 
double power was exemplified. They were not in a sem- 
blance of death only, but a death as real as any other, for 
all the vital functions were stopped, and that is death. 
But the power which caused it had the power to undo it. 
That power was never unconscious. Its conscious con- 
nection with the organism was voluntarily suspended, 
that is all. 

This affirmation of mental suicide and mental resur- 
rection will startle some of our readers. Our sufficient 
reply is to hold our hand steadily pointing to the facts 
which others have furnished in abundance. We have 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 83 

only by our form of recital and exposition presented them 
in a new light, the light of an advanced psychological 
science ; and from this no thorough Pneumatophist can 
recede. 

Nor is this so very strange as our inconsideration may 
suggest. Many men in certain vocations can lie down 
and go to sleep and by self-admonition wake at a given 
hour. We have all of us, perhaps, exemplified in some 
degree this power ; and this is nothing less than stop- 
ping and then restoring the operation of certain organic 
functions. If this can be done in any small degree, 
which no one doubts, there is then no logic against the 
apparent or evident fact that it is done to the utmost 
extent already mentioned. And that makes the resur- 
rection of Jesus nothing at all incredible. 

Of course, these facts are not common, but extraor- 
dinary. But they show a mental power which is unde- 
veloped and which is not duly recognized ; a power 
which may be, and ought to be, cultivated. And it is 
the object of Pneumatopathy to expound and urge this 
possibility and duty, and prosecute the duty to the utmost. 

We ought also to observe that there is a mental power 
which is not consciously of the will, but is of that deeper 
form of power which comprises the whole individual 
mentality. This may be in part far below the organic 
consciousness, or far above it. We have good evidence 
and strong concurrent opinion that we have an indefin- 
ably vast extent of extra-organic mental power ; and what 
is that extent and its limitations we know not. We are 
therefore forbidden to dogmatize on the subject, and are 
enjoined to attend to known facts and interpret them in 
no constrained and artificial way. 



I84 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

There are three distinct ranges of intellectual or con- 
scious action which are super-sensible, or which are not 
subject to the recognized laws of sense, and which, there- 
fore, by the law of analogy should have an influence as 
illustrations of Pneumatopathy. 

One of these is the power of abstract thought. We 
think thoughts which have in them no element of sense 
or space, as when we say that the moral quality of an 
action consists in the feeling and intention which inspired 
it; that benevolence should be guided by intelligence. 
It is true that even this action of pure thought affects 
the organism, wearing the nervous tissue. There is a 
law of connection between this nervous action and the 
pure intellection, but the two are not one and the same. 
Why there is such a law of connection we cannot tell. 
There is no known logical reason or necessity for it. We 
know it as a fact, and there we have to rest it. But it is this 
fact which gives us our analogical argument for Pneuma- 
topathy, or the direct action of mind on the organism. 
We see it does have this power and effect, even in its 
most super-sensible action, and when no such effect is 
sought or thought of. How much more then should it 
have this power when the effect is sought by all the 
energy of our mind and our faith in God and the essen- 
tial laws of his universe. 

Next, it is quite obvious when reflected on, however 
much we may forget it, that all voluntary sensible action 
has a super-sensible origin and source. These sensible 
forms which I am now drawing are the direct effect, as 
they are the expression, of pure thought. Volition is 
also a pure mental action. How the thought and the 
volition are followed by the sensible effects, no one can 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 85 

tell. There is not only no logical necessity for it, but 
there is no essential psychological necessity, as proved 
by the fact that they do not always follow. Sometimes 
men have found suddenly and unexpectedly that their 
will does not operate, and this condition they call paraly- 
sis. The thought and the will are the same, but the sen- 
sible effects are not the same. Hereuthen, we see a law 
of temporary and uncertain connection between super- 
sensible and sensible action, the " how " of which no one 
can explain. This, therefore, like the involuntary and 
abstract thought and organic connection above men- 
tioned, illustrates the special form of Pneumatopathy 
which seeks to heal directly by mind and to expound as 
far as may be the law of such healing. If pure super- 
sensible thought and will are the direct source of all our 
voluntary sensible action and their effects, "why should 
it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise 
the dead," or at least heal the sick through the direct 
agency of the human mind ? Surely the doubt is a dis- 
credit to the intellectual and spiritual action of the 
doubter. 

The great obstruction in the way of the reception of 
the doctrine of the direct agency of mind on mind and 
body is the prevalence of the habit of thinking through 
sense, and in subjection to the laws of sense. They 
" cannot see how" this super-sensible action is possible, 
they say. They mean they cannot see "how" it is pos- 
sible in accordance with the laws of sense, and it is not 
so possible, for that were self-contradictory. But to 
those whose thinking is not immersed in sense, there is 
no difficulty in thinking that super-sensible thought and 
mentality generally can operate independently of sensi- 



1 86 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

ble laws, and according to super-sensible laws, for to be 
able to do this belongs to the nature and conception of a 
super-sensible power. They must, therefore, admit it or 
affirm that we are nothing but organized matter, and that 
there is no super-sensible substance or quality. With 
such as these we cannot argue. There is not common 
ground enough between us to fight on. We cannot 
breathe their atmosphere and make it a substitute for 
that finer one in which we live. 

Then there is the power of clairvoyance, now 
almost universally admitted as a gift of some persons. 
Clairvoyance is a poor word to denote the perception of 
things at a distance in time and place, before and after 
the event, and without the aid of the senses. There are 
those who make pretensions to this for a penny ; but 
there are those who are not counterfiets, but the counter- 
fieted, and some, doubtless at times counterfiet them- 
selves. We could give numerous and indubitable exam- 
ples of the action of such power within our own exper- 
ience, some of them exemplified by our own students, 
and in these days, such things have been so often and 
thoroughly verified, that instances are not necessary. 
As this is a direct mental action, without the aid of sen- 
sible media, it is an independent support to the doctrine 
of Pneumatopathy. It illustrates and exemplifies the 
same general law, the direct action of super-sensible 
power relative to sensible things. Surely, if we may 
allow, as we must, a power like this for mere knowledge, 
it is still more in keeping with infinite Goodness to be- 
stow a power of beneficient action for the healing of 
infirmities and the preservation of health. 

Allied with clairvoyance is telepathy, which is the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 87 

modern term to express the power to produce some kind 
of feeling at a distance. This has been very well veri- 
fied as sometimes occurring between friends. This is 
usually not pleasurable, but rather the opposite. It is 
thus the counterpart of our work in treating people at 
a distance, we seeking to generate health and happiness. 
This distant treatment is thus justified by its despisers, 
besides having the support of numerous facts which are 
our own justification. We know well its blessed poten- 
cy, and give God thanks for the knowledge. 

Some of those who are only looking on, and not yet 
looking into, much less understanding, Pneumatopathy, 
may think that it is only letting nature have time and 
opportunity to recuperate. Pneumatopathy does, indeed, 
do this in many cases. But this is not all. It adds a 
new potency to nature, a potency of the highest rank. 
It re-enforces organic nature with super-organic mind, 
stimulating it with the energy of the most inspiring con- 
viction and hope. It represses abnormal excitement 
while it teaches how to quicken and develope a healthy 
normal action, the form and source of true power, a power 
which is human in its subject but divine in its origin, 
and should be divine in its daily re-enforcement by a 
living trust in God. 

Few men have given more attention than the late 
William B. Carpenter to the relative power of the mind 
over the body. In his thick volume on "Mental Physiol- 
ogy," he has collected a large fund of facts in illustration of 
this subject ; and at the same time he has done his ut- 
most to screw and dry-cork them all into the small bottle 
of his pet notion, " Expectant Attention, or the Domi- 
nation of any single Idea." In his view this explains 



1 88 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

everything. Nothing more need be said on the philos- 
ophy or science of the subject. This is an ultimatum, 
however, at which none but himself and a few like- 
minded have ever been able to stop. It is not the pole 
of existence and causes, but only a flying spray of the 
magnetic current. It, however, concedes to mind a 
power of vast and indefinite extent over the body. It 
makes mind king of sense and opens the gate for Pneu- 
matopathy, as the king of glory, to come in and take 
rightful possession of the whole, as being fully able, and 
in a far nobler way, to assimulate all his facts as well as 
his little theory. We present the following quotations 
from his ninteenth chapter, which shows him at his best 
and exhibits his entire doctrine on this question. " In 
none of these cases has the will any influence whatever ; 
the mental state which determines the result being an 
emotional one, which may be linked on either to a per- 
ception or to an idea, according as the object that calls it 
forth is actually or only subjectively present, and the 
direct influence of the emotions upon the quantity of these 
secretions is shown by numerous other facts. 

Thus, the secretion of tears, which is continually be- 
ing formed to an extent sufficient to lubricate the sur- 
face of the eyes, is poured out in great abundance under 
the moderate excitement of the emotions, either of joys, 
tenderness, or grief. It is checked, however, by violent 
grief ; and it is a well-known indication of moderated 
sorrow, when tears "come to the relief" of the sufferer. 

So, the salivary secretion may be suspended by strong 
emotion ; a fact of which advantage is taken in India for 
the discovery of a thief among the servants of a family 
— each of them being required to hold a certain quan- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 89 

tity of rice in his mouth during a few minutes, and the 
offender being generally distinguished by the dryness 
of his mouthful. 

"That the gastric secretion may be entirely suspended 
by powerful emotion clearly appears as well from the re- 
sults of the experiments on animals, as from the well- 
known influence created by a sudden mental shock 
(whether painful or pleasurable), in dissipating the appe- 
tite for food, and in suspending the digestive process 
when in active operation. Several other secretions are 
affected in a similar manner by emotional excitement ; 
thus the special odoriferious secretions of many animals 
are poured forth under alarm with such potency as to 
constitute their special means of defence, and in some 
human beings the cutaneous secretion becomes strongly 
amoniacal when either fear or bashfulness is strongly 
excited. 

"There is no secretion, however, on the quality, as well 
as the quantity of which emotional states have so obvi- 
ous an influence, as they have upon that of milk ; and 
this point, being one of great practical importance, as 
well as of scientific interest, will be here dwelt on in 
some detail — conclusive evidence of such alterations be- 
ing afforded by the disorder produced by the altered 
secretion in the digestive system of the infant, which 
is a more delicate apparatus for testing its quality, than 
any that the chemist could devise. The following general 
statements on this subject were made by Sir Astley 
Cooper, as the result of extended and careful enquiries : 
The secretion of milk proceeds best in a tranquil state 
of mind, and with a cheerful temper; then the milk is 
regularly abundant, and agrees well with the child. On 



I90 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

the contrary, a fretful temper lessens the quantity of 
milk, makes it thin and serous, and causes it to disturb 
the child's bowels, producing intestinal fever and much 
griping. 

"Fits of anger produce a very irritating milk, followed 
by griping in the infant, with green stools. Grief has a 
great influence on lactation, and consequently upon the 
child. The loss of a near and dear relation or a change 
of fortune, will often so much diminish the secretion of 
milk as to render adventitious aid necessary for the sup- 
port of the child. Anxiety of mind diminishes the 
quantity, and alters the quality of the milk. The re- 
ception of a letter which leaves the mind in anxious sus- 
pense, lessens the draught, and the breast becomes empty. 
If the child be ill, and the mother is anxious respecting 
it, she complains to her medical attendant that she has 
little milk, and that her infant is griped and has frequent 
green and frothy motions. Fear has a powerful influ- 
ence on the secretion of milk. I am informed by a med- 
ical man who practices much among the poor, that the 
apprehension of the brutal conduct of a drunken hus- 
band will put a stop for a time to the secretion of milk. 
When this happens, the breast feels knotted and hard, 
flaccid from the absence of milk, and that which is secre- 
ted is highly irritating ; and some time elapses before a 
healthy secretion returns. Terror, which is sudden, and 
great fear instantly stops this secretion. Of this, two 
striking instances, in which the secretion, although 
previously abundant, was completely arrested by this 
emotion, are detailed by Sir A. Cooper. 

"There is even evidence that the Mammary Secretion 
may acquire an actually poisonous character, under the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I9I 

influence of violent mental excitement ; for certain phe- 
nomena which might otherwise be regarded in no other 
light than as simple coincidences, appear to justify this 
inference, when interpreted by the less striking, but 
equally decisive facts already mentioned. 

" A carpenter fell into a quarrel with a soldier billeted 
in his house, and was set upon by the latter with his 
drawn sword. The wife of the carpenter at first trem- 
bled from fear and terror, and then suddenly threw her- 
self furiously between the combatants, wrested the 
sword from the soldier's hand, broke it in pieces, and 
threw it away. During the tumult, some neighbors 
came in and separated the men. While in this state of 
strong excitement, the mother took up her child from 
the cradle, where it lay playing and in the most perfect 
health, never having had a moment's illness ; she gave 
it the breast, and in so doing sealed its fate. In a few 
minutes the infant left off sucking, became restless, 
panted, and sank dead upon its mother's bosom. The 
physician who was instantly called in, found the child 
lying in the cradle, as if asleep, and with its features un- 
disturbed ; but all his resources were fruitless. It was 
irrecoverably gone." 

" In this interesting case, the milk seemed to have un- 
dergone a change which gave it a powerful sedative ac- 
tion upon the susceptible nervous system of the infant. 

" Similar facts are recorded by other writers. Mr. 
Wardrop mentions (" Lancet," No. 566), that having 
removed a small tumor from behind the ear of a mother 
all went well until she fell into a violent passion ; and 
the child, being suckled soon afterwards, died in convul- 
sions. He was sent for hastily to see another child in 



192 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



convulsions after taking the breast of a nurse who had 
just been severely reprimanded ; and he was informed by- 
Sir Richard Croft, that he had seen many similar instances. 
Three others are recorded by Burdoch (" Physiologie "). 
In one of them, the infant was seized with convulsions 
on the right side, and hemiplegia on the left, on sucking 
immediately after its mother had met with some distress- 
ing occurance. Another case was that of a puppy, which 
was seized with epileptic convulsions, on sucking its 
mother after a fit of rage. 

"The following, which occurred within the writer's own 
knowledge, is perhaps equally valuable to the physiologist, 
as an example of the similarly fatal influence of undue 
emotion of a different character ; and should serve, with 
the preceding, as a sulutary warning to mothers, to pre- 
vent themselves from brooding over depressing ideas, 
as they would from indulging in passionate excitement. 
A lady having several children, of which none had 
manifested any particular tendency to cerebral disease, 
and of which the youngest was a healthy infant a few 
months old, heard of the death (from acute hydro- 
cephalus), of the infant child of a friend residing at 
a distance, with whom she had been on terms of close 
intimacy, and whose family had increased almost simul- 
taneous with her own. The circumstance naturally made 
a strong impression on her mind, and she seems to have 
dwelt on it the more, as she happened at that period to 
be separated from the rest of her family, and to be much 
alone with her babe. One morning, shortly after having 
nursed it, she laid the infant in its cradle, asleep and 
apparently in perfect health ; her attention was shortly 
attracted to it by a noise ; and on going to the cradle, 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I93 

she found her infant in a convulsion which lasted a few- 
moments and then left it dead. Now although the in- 
fluence of the emotion is less unequivocally displayed in 
this case than in the preceding, it can scarcely be a mat- 
ter of doubt ; since it is natural that no feeling should be 
stronger in the mother's mind under such circumstances, 
than the fear that her own beloved child should be taken 
from her, as that of her friend had been ; and it is pro- 
bable that she had been particularly dwelling on it, at 
the time of nursing the infant on that morning. 

There is abundant evidence that a sudden and violent 
excitement of some depressing emotion, especially terror, 
may produce a severe and even a fatal disturbance of 
the organic functions ; with general symptoms so strongly 
resembling those of sedative poisoning, as to make it 
highly probable that the blood is directly affected by 
the emotional state, through nervous agency ; and in 
fact, the emotional alteration of the secretions seems 
much more probably attributable to some such affec- 
tions of the blood, than to a primary disturbance of 
the secreting process itself. Although there can be 
no doubt that the habitual state of the emotional 
sensibility has an important influence upon the gen- 
eral activity and perfection of the nutritive processes, 
— as is shown by the well nourished appearance usually 
exhibited by those who are free from mental anxiety, as 
well as from bodily ailment, contrasted with the " lean 
and hungry look " of those who are a prey to continual 
disquietude, yet it is not often that we have the oppor- 
tunity of observing the production of disorder in the 
nutrition of any specific part, by such influence. The 
two following cases, however, in which local disorder of 



194 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

nutrition followed upon powerful emotion, determined as 
to their seat by the intense direction of the attention to 
a particular part of the body, rest upon excellent author- 
ity. 

"A lady, who was watching her child at play, saw a 
heavy window sash fall on its hand, cutting off three of 
the fingers, and she was so much overcome by fright and 
distress as to be unable to render it any assistance. A 
surgeon was speedily obtained, who, having dressed the 
wounds, turned himself to the mother, whom he found 
seated, moaning and complaining of pain in her hand. 
On examination, three fingers, corresponding to those 
injured in the child, were discovered to be swollen and 
inflamed, although they had ailed nothing prior to the 
accident. In four and twenty hours, incisions were made 
into them, and pus was evacuated ; sloughs were after- 
wards discharged, and the wounds ultimately healed." — 
(Carter on the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria 
p. 24.) 

"A highly intelligent lady known to Dr. Tuke, re- 
lated to him that one day she was walking past a pub- 
lic institution, and observed a child, in whom she was 
particularly interested, coming out through an iron gate. 
She saw that he let go the gate, after opening it, and that 
it seemed likely to close upon him and concluded that 
it would do so with such force as to crush his ankle ; 
however, this did not happen. ' It was impossible,' she 
says, 'by word or act to be quick enough to meet 
the supposed emergency ; and, in fact, I found I 
could not move, for such intense pain came on in the 
ankle, corresponding to the one which I thought the 
boy would have injured, that I could only put my hand 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 195 

on it to lessen its extreme painfulness. I am sure I did 
not move so as to strain or sprain it. The walk home — 
a distance about a quarter of a mile — was very labor- 
ious, and in taking off my stocking I found a circle 
around the ankle, as if it had been painted with red 
currant juice, with a large spot of the same on the outer 
part. By morning the whole foot was inflamed, and I 
was a prisoner to my bed many days.' " — (Influence of 
the Mind upon the Body, p. 260.) 

"The influence of the state of expectant attention, in 
modifying the processes of nutrition and secretion, is not 
less remarkable than we have seen it to be in the 
production of muscular movements. The volitional di- 
rection of the consciousness to a part, independently of 
emotional excitement, suffices to call forth sensations in 
it, which seem to depend upon a change in its circula- 
tion, and if this state be kept up automatically by the 
attraction of the attention, the change may become a 
source of modification, not only in the functional action, 
but in the nutrition of the part. Thus, there can be no 
doubt that real disease often supervenes upon fancied 
ailment, especially through the indulgence of what is 
known as the hypochondriacal tendency to dwell upon 
uneasy sensations ; these sensations being themselves, 
in many instances, purely " subjective" in many individ- 
uals (especially females) whose sympathies are strong ; 
a pain in any part of the body may be produced by 
witnessing in another, or even by hearing described, the 
sufferings occasioned by disease or injury of that part, 
and if this pain be attended to and believed in, as an 
indication of serious mischief, injurious consequences 
are very likely to follow. So, again, the self-tormenting 



I96 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

hypochondriac will imagine himself the victim of any 
malady that he may "fancy," and if this fancy should be 
sufficiently persistent and engrossing, it is not unlikely 
to lead to real disease of the organ to which it relates. 
This persistent direction of the attention has a much 
greater potency when combined with the expectation of 
a particular result, and thus it happens that the spells of 
pretenders to occult powers, in all ages and nations, 
often produce the predicted maladies in the subjects who 
are credulous enough to believe in their efficacy. Such 
was formerly the case among the Negroes of the British 
West Indies, to such a degree, that it was found neces- 
sary to repress what were known as " Obeah practices," 
by penal legislation, a slow piningaway, ending in death, 
being the not uncommon result of the fixed belief on the 
part of the victim, that " Obi " had been put upon him 
by some old man or woman reputed to possess the injur- 
ious power. So great, indeed, was the dread of these 
spells, that the mere threat of one party to a quarrel to 
"put Obi" upon the other, was often sufficient to terrify 
the latter into submission. And there is adequate 
ground for the assertion, that even among the better in- 
structed classes of our own country, a fixed belief that 
a mortal disease had seized upon the frame, or that a 
particular operation or system of treatment would prove 
unsuccessful, has been in numerous instances the real 
occasion of a fatal result. But, on the other hand, the 
sane mental state may operate beneficially, in checking 
a morbid action and restoring the healthy state. That 
the confident expectation of a cure is the most potent 
means of bringing it about, doing that which no medical 
treatment can accomplish, may be affirmed as the gener- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I97 

alized result of experiences of the most varied kind, 
extending through a long series of ages. For it is this 
which is common to methods of the most diverse charc- 
ter ; some of them — as the Metalic Tractors, Mesmer- 
ism, and Homoeopathy — pretending to some physical 
power, whilst to others, as the invocations of Prince 
Theopenlohe, and the commands of Dr. Vernon, or the 
Zouave Jacob, some miraculous influence was attributed. 
It has been customary, on the part of those who do not 
accept either the "physical" or the "miraculous" hy- 
pothesis as the interpretation of these facts to refer the 
effects either to " imagination " or to "faith," two men- 
tal states apparently incongruous, and neither of them 
rightly expressing the condition on which they depend. 
For although there can be no doubt that in a great num- 
ber of cases the patients have believed themselves to 
be cured when no real amelioration of their condition 
had taken place, yet there is a large body of trustworthy 
evidence that permanent amendment of a kind perfectly 
obvious to others, has shown itself in a great variety of 
local maladies, when the patients have been sufficiently 
possesed by the expectation of benefit, and by faith in 
the efficacy of the means employed. "Any system of 
treatment," it has been recently remarked, " however 
absurd, that can be ' puffed' into public notoriety for 
efficacy — any individual who, by accident or design ob- 
tains a reputation for the possession of a special gift of 
healing — is certain to attract a multitude of sufferers, 
among whom will be several who are capable of being 
really benefited by a strong assurance of relief, whilst 
others, for a time, believe themselves to have experienced 
it. And there is, for the same reason, no religious 



I98 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

system that has attained a powerful hold on the minds 
of its votaries which cannot boast its ' miracles ' of this 
order." 

In these days we hear much of magnetism and of its 
peculiar power, as the great agent which either poisons 
or heals the human organism. On this subject much is 
affirmed which cannot be verified ; and nearly all who 
write or speak on the subject occupy a materialistic 
plane of thought. They make magnetism a subtle in- 
visible fluid proceeding from the body, and surrounding 
the body like an atmosphere ; and of good and evil 
agency according as is the character of individuals and 
varying with their temperament, and even in some de- 
gree with their moods. On this is based a doctrine of 
elective affinities and aversions, which is pregnant with 
important and dangerous implications. 

Of this the only proof presented is the known effect 
of the presence of different persons, some being agree- 
able and inspiring, while others are disagreeable and 
depressing. These are incontestible facts ; but that the 
assertion of a material magnetic fluid is an explanation 
of them or an assignment of their cause is a very differ- 
ent thing. As this alleged cause is not an object of 
sense, it is only an inference, and the inference is illegit- 
imate if a simpler one is conceivable, and that simpler 
one is a direct reference of it to mind as the conscious 
subject. The existence of this mind we know because 
we are conscious of it ; and we need not invent another 
and material and unknown thing as the cause. We are 
not of those who cannot conceive a cause which is not 
material. We prefer to reverse the order by making all 
to be mind, whether sensible or super-sensible, and 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 199 

therefore, with greater simplicity and philosophical pre- 
cision we call that mind which they without warrant in 
science affirm to be a material magnetic fluid exuding 
from the body. 

Magnetic healing is, therefore, only one of the myriad 
tributes to the reality and extent of mental healing. 
This mental healing, whether called magnetic or desig- 
nated by some other term, is of various degrees of virtue 
on the score of the character and intelligence of the 
operators whose work in the long run will inevitably be 
marked by his individual worth, and bear his image and 
superscription. Magnetic influence is closely allied with 
mesmerism, and is only a materialistic name for a mental 
influence of an order bordering on sense and closely 
associated in time and action with the action of sense in 
some form. Therefore, we do not denounce magnetic 
healing ; but appropriate it as a form of mental healing 
best adapted to the partially developed condition of some 
patients and practitioners. 

All the mental healing of all the olden times, whether 
recorded in the Bible or other books, were universally 
regarded as special and peculiarly super-natural endow- 
ments, and no index whatever of the natural capability 
of the human race. God or the gods sent these super- 
naturally gifted men and women at intervals into the 
world, and the world could only sit still and wait for their 
arrival. There was therefore, no incentive to study 
them, no hope of knowing or understanding anything of 
the law of their power and action, because it was sup- 
posed there was no such law. Scientific investigation 
had hence no vocation. The conception of Pneumato- 
pathy was then impossible. All the Bible healers ascribe 



200 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

their power to God as a peculiar and super-natural gift. 
There was, therefore, no advantage to be had from study. 
This would give theology, but do nothing to promote or 
elucidate this power. It must fall upon men like the 
double portion of Elijah's spirit on Elisha, or like the 
Pentecostal visitation. It remained for modern times to 
generate a science of Pneumatopathy. 

The principle that all is mind, and so mind is the only 
power, is the great truth which is to revolutionize the 
world and elevate its life many degrees. Mind is always 
the healer, because there is no matter, what is so called 
being but a lower form or mode of mind. The higher 
rightly rules the lower in virtue of its relative quality 
and power. The mind as intelligence and wise purpose, 
as thought-power and will-power, must be in well devel- 
oped men mightier than sense, and must dominate and 
control its action, and add to it a peculiar potency with 
a corresponding result. Here is a prime element in the 
philosophy of mental healing. . It is a necessity from its 
nature as the supremest quality of being, the extent and 
variety of the power of which we know but little. 

We are not blind to the fact that mind is in our ex- 
perience so far limited that it is often overcome and 
baffled by the operations of matter, so-called, the sense- 
forms of mind. Along here is the line of battle between 
the superior and inferior forms of force ; and surely as 
wild beasts have given way to man and his domesticated 
animals, all brute force will ultimately yield to the power 
of purpose animated by pure intelligence. 

The direct power of mind over the organism and even 
over the minds of others is seen in the well-known phe- 
nomena which are designated as mesmerism. Much of 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 201 

these are doubtless false, but not all, far from it. Here 
is a vast extent and multiplicity of phenomena, which 
reveal an undefmable extent of the power of mind, and 
these have become the objects of knowledge and of 
scientific research wholly within a hundred years, and 
"no one can tell whereunto this thing will grow." 

There are some things which characterize mesmeric 
agency which ought to be noted. 

(i.) Mesmerism throws people into an abnormal con- 
dition, or out of practical sense-relation to the rest of 
mankind. This is not of the nature of a healing agency. 
Such agency is just the contrary in its operation and 
effect. Mesmerism may therefore, illustrate, but it does 
not exemplify the power of mental healing. 

(2.) For this reason mesmerism is always temporary 
in its action and effect. The healing agency when 
perfect is final and permanent. From the same or sim- 
ilar causes the malady may return, not because the heal- 
ing virtue is exhausted, for in the latter case the healing 
would not be healing. Healing is a restoration to the 
normal condition of wholeness and harmony of function ; 
and derangement is not a mere and absolute negation, 
but a false and discordant action of some of the mem- 
bers, and healing restores their proper action. 

(3.) Mesmerism also puts the mind itself into an 
abnormal condition, and out of all practical relation to 
all minds but the operator. Mental healing operates on 
the mind as on the body, so that its action is thoroughly 
natural, conformable to all mental laws and in normal 
connection with other minds. 

(4.) Mesmerism is wholly human in its action and 
reference. No mesmerist looks to God to do his work, 



202 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

or accounts it anything more than the natural action and 
effect of his own will, with perhaps the concurrence of 
the will of those on whom he operates. The mental 
healer may be as humanistic as the mesmerizer, and in 
many cases they may be only mesmerizers. The most 
distinguished healers have been prayerful and devout, 
and have attributed their works to the power they have 
derived from this spiritual condition and attitude. 

(5.) Mesmerists cannot operate only on a fraction of 
the human race, on perhaps one-sixth, as I heard one 
operator say ; and another, one in twenty-five ; and I 
should say it is probably a very much smaller per- 
centage. It is possible only on a peculiarly consti- 
tuted class. Mental healing recognizes no such limita- 
tion. Its virtue is for all. It is true all are not cured 
with equal ease, from different causes more or less clear 
or obscure. But though we cannot readily explain it all, 
we are sure it is not analogous to the limitations of mes- 
merism. It follows a different law, and does not exclude 
any such large proportion from its beneficient action. 

(6.) Mesmerism operates on the healthy as well as on 
the sick. Mental healing has no office where there is no 
evil or malady to remove. 

(7.) Mesmerism produces evil as well as good. The 
mental healers, as such, does only good. 

(8.) The mesmerized know not afterward the changes 
they have undergone, nor their agent. The patient 
healed is conscious of all, knows all about the healer who 
visits him, and all the changes for good which ensue, 
because there is a continuity of the normal action of the 
mental powers. 

Still a question may be raised, whether the humanist 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 203 

mental healer is not a species of mesmerist. Like the 
mesmerist he destroys pain, so that teeth can be extracted 
and limbs amputated without suffering. There is just 
here a coincidence between them, but the disparities are 
many and great, so that only by a largeness amounting 
to loseness can they be classed together, and the healer 
be called a mesmerist — that is, if he truly heals. 

But on the side of evil the healing power seems to 
come within the range of some forms of mesmerism. 
In some of its action mesmerism paralyzes the powers 
of mind and body. It arrests every movement, or makes 
them ridiculous, absurd or injurious and painful. What 
is that power and whence? Now look at this human 
power to heal, what is that ? Is it a cast-iron force 
which can work only in one way ? One thing is clear, 
that it is voluntary. It is directed to particular persons 
at particular times and from the action of motives. It 
is a force which we may use or not use, or which we may 
use in one direction in preference to another. 

The essential quality of mesmeric agency consists in 
the imposition by the mesmerizer of his own purposed 
or simulated thought, action and feeling upon another. 
He can thus temporarily change and reverse all the 
wonted course of ideas, feelings and sensible experience. 
He can make the land seem like water and the waters 
seem like solid earth. He can make ice seem like a 
burning coal, and he can make a high heat to seem like 
cold. He can render persons insensible to pain from 
pricks, pinches and contusions. He can make the old 
feel young, the lame to imagine they are all right, and 
the blind to seem to see. 

It is, therefore, nothing strange if he can make the 



204 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

sick feel well. This, however, is all imaginary. It is 
abnormal. It does not belong to the real world of other 
men and women. It is only the world of the operator's 
thought and purpose, and for that reason it is limited in 
its duration, and would be only insanity if permanent, 
because it is a mental action which is out of harmony 
with all other people. No doubt there are many healers 
of this kind, some of them consciously and some of 
them unconsciously so. Their work is instantly strik- 
ing, but illusive and temporary, but it gets them noto- 
riety and patients and money, though the real and per- 
manent good they do is very small. 

The faculty of mental healing is a sacred and holy 
power. As such, it is to be cultivated and used with all 
fidelity and diligence, and with all sincerity. Like every 
other endowment, it is susceptible to culture or neglect, 
and it will grow greater or less, according to the way it 
is treated and used. Sincerity of action and utterance 
is one of the conditions of its fullest exercise and devel- 
opment, and an honest intent to do good must be cher- 
ished in opposition to merely personal ends. 

It is a fundamental dogma with one school of mental 
healers, that sensible things have no power except what 
they receive from human " beliefs," and these " beliefs " 
are pronounced to be erroneous and illusory. This is 
inconsistent with itself and contrary to all human expe- 
rience. The " belief " here is generally the effect instead 
of the cause of the action of sensible results. Having 
experienced certain results from certain sensible forms 
and connections, we believe we shall have the same ex- 
perience in the same connections. Before experience we 
neither know nor believe anything on the subject. It is 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 205 

true that to some extent we have inherited tendencies 
or beliefs, which act prior to experience. But these are 
the effect of experience in our progenitors. 

In the lines of grosser sense, beliefs do not control 
experiences. Nothing is more common than conflictiun 
between experience and beliefs. Pain and pleasure often 
come contrary to expectation and belief. People taking 
deadly poisons in the belief that they are taking some- 
thing else are smitten with death. People are often 
burned or scalded with- what they believed to be cold, 
and utter sots are the product of drinking liquor under 
the firmest assurance that it would never hurt them, 
whatever it might do to others. 

I hold that mind gives to sensible things all their 
power, but not in the form of " belief." All mind is not 
a " belief," though all things are mind, and there are pro- 
cesses of mind which precede and generate both experi- 
ence and belief. The power of sense is of mind, because 
it is mind always, since "all is mind," but not all belief 
and this mental action which generates sensible phe- 
nomena and determines their relation to each other ante- 
dates all beliefs and all conscious states now known to us. 

Mind as known to us, that is, our own human mind, is 
subject to laws of control, guidance and limitations, and 
these laws we cannot transcend. We cannot transcend 
(usually at least) the law of gravitation. If the center 
of gravity is thrown over the cliff, the whole body will 
go down, and no thought possible to us can prevent it. 
In the tropics and at the poles we must inevitably have 
different sensations of heat and cold. No possible men- 
tal action can render harmless a dagger struck into the 
heart. Without lungs no man can breathe, and no 



206 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

thought of man can instantly restore the destroyed 
lungs. It is not the office of Pneumatopathy to deny 
facts or to misinterpret them. 

Pneumatopaphy acknowledges that there are laws of 
mind, and these laws are of two classes and grades, sen- 
sible and super-sensible. The great merit of the theory 
known as " Christian Science," consists in its affirmation 
that " all is mind." Its demerit is that it does not half 
comprehend its own utterance, so that it buries up that 
true utterance with a heap of impossibilities. There is no 
matter as other than modes of mind, and so there is no 
force but mind. But to infer thence that there is no 
force in sensible things, is not admissible, because we 
know from experience, that it is not true ; and, besides, 
they ought to see that if all is mind, these are mind, and 
therefore, constitute a class of mental forces, which have 
their laws relative to each other, and relative to super- 
sensible forces and laws. They are imposed upon us by 
our constitution. We cannot resist or evade them by 
any mental action. We can use them and make them 
turn to our advantage and work as our servants. Thus 
the lungs have power to inhale and hold the air, and in 
co-operation with the heart to extract from it oxygen 
for the blood. That is one of the forces and functions of 
these organs, and they will perform this office in a nor- 
mal condition whether we think of or believe it or not, 
and in a very diseased condition they will not do it 
thoroughly, whatever we may think or believe. Here 
comes in Pneumatopathy. It operates on the mind of 
the patient so that his mind operates healthily on his 
vital organism so as to heal and restore the diseased and 
wasted parts. All this is done in accordance with the 
forces and laws of sense, as well as of spirit. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 207 

Of course, if, as those people affirm, there were only 
one mind, and that one Infinite, there could be no such 
mental limitations. But then there could be no "be- 
liefs " or " illusions." The mind which is the subject of 
these errors is limited and erroneous. This is certainly 
our own mind, the human mind of which we are con- 
scious, by being conscious of its action. This action we 
will neither foist on God nor deny as a phenomenon of 
known actual experience. 

But, while sensible mind or sensible things, have some 
power, still super-sensible mind is the superior potency, 
and is ordained to rule. But, in order to rule, it must in 
some respects obey. It can operate in full domination 
only in harmony with the law of every kind of force. 
It must therefore, study and know these laws, their re- 
lation to each other, and thence the law by which the 
higher rules the lower, healing, restoring, reducing all to 
harmony and preserving harmony throughout the whole. 

The power of the human mind as a direct agent for 
good (or possibly evil), has received as yet but little 
scientific attention, and we are now beginning to dis- 
cover that this power is great, various and subtle ; and 
we need to find out by careful and prolonged investiga- 
tion the laws of this agency. Its power was always 
recognized, but it was attributed to magic and witch- 
craft and demon agency. It is now extensively by a cer- 
tain class attributed to spirits returning from another 
sphere. 

There may be some truth in this theory. It is not 
impossible nor specially improbable, and it is not neces 
sarily offensive to any legitimate feeling of the human 
heart. But it is very easy for its zealous advocates to 



208 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

press its claims farther than evidence will warrant, and 
to attribute some things to this agency which can be ex- 
plained on the simpler theory of the agency of the 
human mind in its present state and relations. What- 
ever can possibly be so explained, ought to be, and how 
much may be so accounted for, we know not. We know 
not the extent of the power, conscious and unconscious, 
of the human mind. It is very little that we have yet 
discovered of ourselves. 

We know not when or where we began to be, whether 
we have had an existence in another or many other 
forms before this, nor what we may have thence learned, 
and which we may be able with a sort of indefinite and 
partially blind consciousness to develope in this form of 
life. The intelligence which is seen in certain rappings, 
motions, signals, impressions and apparent possessions 
and obsessions and inspirations may possibly be thus our 
own action. Our former conscious state may come over 
us now without extinguishing the present form of con- 
sciousness, and the former to the latter may communi- 
cate much which seems to us in our self-ignorance to 
come from sources beyond ourselves. Here is a large 
and difficult field to explore. The work will be very long, 
and beforehand we cannot reasonably be very confident 
of the result of the investigation. For myself, I am in- 
clined to think that a very large proportion of phenom- 
ena which have been considered of altruistic origin, will 
in the end be found to be subjective alike in their effect 
and cause. We should not dogmatize, and should keep 
judgment in suspense till we have collected sufficient 
data for a scientific conclusion. In the meanwhile, an 
inclination in favor of subjective, instead altruistic explan- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 209 

ation, is more scientific than the opposite inclination, 
and in our extended ignorance of the limits of the human 
soul and its powers, it is perhaps possible, without any 
manifest violence to attribute to ourselves no small pro- 
portion of the phenomena which some impute to departed 
spirits. We also know that some of these phenomena 
are consciously simulated, and there is nothing to forbid 
the supposition that there is much more that is uncon- 
sciously simulated, as well as much that is only misinter- 
preted innocently through ignorance. 

On the other hand, we ought not to attribute to any 
special divine agency, whatever can be attributed to man. 
In science the immediate causes are the uniform imme- 
diate antecedents. This antecedent is the agency of 
man in all the acknowledged cases of mental healing. 
Some of these healers are by no means conspicuously 
godly either in conviction or character. They make no 
appeal to God in their action, and their dependence is on 
themselves or on some subtle law or force in nature 
which is evoked into action by their will or mental 
agency. 

Neither the moral nor religious character is the meas- 
ure of the healing power of man. Some of the best of 
people have very little of this power ; while it is pos- 
sessed in a larger degree by some of inferior moral 
spirituality. How to explain it fully is yet beyond our 
power, because we cannot fully explain' the law of the 
agency in general, or of the healing agency of some good 
people. But we can do something toward it now. 

One of the laws of mental healing is that there must 
be an active faith on the part of the patient. This is 
manifest all through the New Testament. Jesus, it is 



2IO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

said, " could do no mighty works at Nazereth, because 
of their unbelief." When one patient solicited his aid, 
Jesus said : " Believest thou that I am able to do this ? " 
" Yea Lord," was the response, and then the work was 
done. Concerning the cripple who sat daily at the gate 
of the temple, it is said that "Peter, seeing he had faith 
to be Jiealed, said, look on us," and then enjoined him to 
rise up and walk. In some cases physical paralysis is 
the effect of a mental impression. This can be cured 
by the removal of that impression, and by nothing else. 

In all such cases, what is needed is to change the 
mental current from acquiescence in a supposed necessity 
into a hopeful and assured energy against it. No mat- 
ter how this is done or by whom, it will be none the less 
effective. The patient may think it is directly of God, 
or indirectly through the pious faith or science of the 
human operator, whether he is realy good or not ; or he 
may be indifferent to all this, and discern or assume that 
it is all and wholly a natural human process and cause as 
well as result ; and a bad man may be just as effective 
as a good man in promoting this. 

There is also an erroneous mental action which is yet 
beneficial. If one is disposed to believe in supernatural 
agency, and believes in the pure intentions of a mental 
practitioner, he may thence be incited to a health-giving 
mental action and ascribe the effect to God and his holy 
messenger, though this same messenger may be far re- 
moved from a holy character or a divine influence. It is 
thus that worthless wandering preachers, "revivalists," 
may be the means of good to many who have faith in 
God as speaking and acting through those men. 

There is also a law, according to which one mind holds 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 211 

an ascendancy over another by a non-moral force which 
operates irrespective of the moral character of its sub- 
ject. A known bad man may thus attain entire domin- 
ion over a good man, and lead him to a mental action 
which may speedily conquer some forms of disease. 
The same effect may be wrought by the same character 
on one who is not good, and cares for no good except 
what is selfish. In such mental healing character goes 
for little or nothing. 

It should be considered lso, that bad men may be the 
vehicle of divine power and a genuine healing truth and 
virtue. They are not near so likely to be thus favored 
as good men. They are not the regular and normal 
channels of such influence. But this influence is so 
large and liberal that it occasionally flows over, into and 
through unworthy characters for the good of others. A 
selfish intellect may lay hold of an idea and work it well 
for selfish ends, concealing and disguising its object that 
it may be the more successful. 

The thoroughness and permanence of the healing 
agency in all such cases depends considerably on the 
patient. In proportion as his mental action is radically 
in harmony with the moral and spiritual, as well as the 
material laws of the universe, it will be eternally healthy. 
It is good to the core and to the everlasting foundation 
of things. It may not effect every good thing at once. 
In proportion also, as it involves any radical discord, it 
will have to become manifest in some form of evil which 
it generates. 

It should be also considered that those who are bad 
people are not wholly bad. There is " a better nature " 
belonging to them ; and this all along has its influence, 



212 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

and at brief intervals has the ascendency, when tempta- 
tion too strong for its associated evil is absent. Most 
bad people will do good when it coincides with their rec- 
ognized interest, and they will be glad that they can be 
good so easily and cheaply ; and the Spirit of Goodness 
which informs the universe utilizes this disposition and 
makes them so far the channels of its power and in- 
fluence. 

A little reflection will further remind us that a selfish 
will may intensify personal potency in working for ends 
which are objectively good. Selfish passion and greed 
are generally more intense than goodness and benevo- 
lence, and their power to stimulate action correspondingly 
strong. It is seldom we see self-forgetful goodness as 
wide awake as self-seeking zeal. If, however, the selfish 
disposition can wear the airs and aspect of goodness and 
righteousness in pursuing its own ends, its action becomes 
more free and happy, and it is quickened into a more 
ardent and effective dilligence by this simulated virtue. 
It will thence often impose upon itself, and still more 
frequently upon others. Thus the human Satan, posing 
as an angel of light, half believes that he is an angel of 
light, and entitled to consideration accordingly, and with 
the aid of those whom he has " deceived" he will "make 
war on the saints," as if they were the dragons teeth 
and he the Christ come to inflict vengence. 

It is not usually best for physicians to depend wholly 
on themselves. So is it here. A sick person, even 
though skilled in Christian Pneumatopathy, should usu- 
ally seek the help of another. But neither is he to de- 
pend wholly on another. In ordinary conditions each 
one should depend on himself. He should be the source 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 213 

of perpetual health to himself. He should avoid becom- 
ing sick, and if he finds himself overtaken by some 
trouble he should set to work for its destruction. The 
leaves which are for the healing of the nations are within 
the reach of all. It has been supposed they grow only 
in some far off and other-world paradise. But they are 
"the word of faith which we preach." As Paul teaches, 
it is foolish to think of fetching Christ from heaven or 
from the deep. He is always nigh us, even in our heart, 
and we need only exercise the God-given power. Oh ye 
ailing ones, your ailments are not of God, except as they 
are a call for you to bring into proper action your high 
endowments as the sons and daughters of the Lord 
Almighty. In all their affliction he is afflicted, because 
he is grieved that they are afflicted instead of being whole 
and happy. Therefore, be ye " complete in Christ." 



214 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ENDOWMENT AND SCIENCE OF HEALING. 

The gift of healing is from God, whether as a natural 
endowment or a gracious communication. Here all are 
not alike, and no power of mere human education or 
culture can make them alike. There are diversities of 
operations by the same spirit, and as a consequence, 
there are, diversities of gifts. Paul is very full and ex- 
plicit on this subject. He refers to it frequently, and 
with admirable pith and point, and force of illustration ; 
he fills with it the twelfth chapter of his first epistle to 
the Corinthians. It is worth quoting entire. Take the 
following verses: 4-21. 

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 

And there are differences of Administrations, but the 
same Lord. 

And there are diversities of operations, but it is the 
same God which worketh all in all. 

But the manifestations of the Spirit is given to every 
man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit 
the words of Wisdom ; to another, the word of knowl- 
edge by the same Spirit ; to another faith by the same 
Spirit ; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit ; 
to another the working of miracles ; to another, proph- 
esy ; to another, discerning of spirits ; to another, divers 
kinds of tongues ; to another, interpretation of tongues. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 215 

But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, 
dividing to every man severally as he will, — for the body 
is not one member, but many — and the eye cannot say 
unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again, the 
head to the feet, I have no need of you. There is a dif- 
ference of members and functions with unity of interest 
and harmony of operations. 

We cannot turn the nose into an eye, nor the eye into 
the tongue. Each member must be what it is made, and 
it can fill an office which can be filled by no other mem- 
ber .as well. So we cannot make Pneumapathic healers 
of any to whom God has denied the gift. He has not 
absolutely denied it to any, but in some people it is less 
prominent than other gifts, while in some it is perhaps 
the most prominent gift they have. So some have very 
little faculty for teaching, while others have it in a large 
and eminent degree. 

The consideration of these facts is necessary for a 
wise determination of the question of study. While all 
ought to study Pneumatopathy enough to make some 
good use of it in their daily life for themselves and 
others ; some who show special gifts for the work should 
give to it deep and prolonged study with all the helps 
they can command, that they may be " thoroughly fur- 
nished unto every good work" in this line, and be ''work- 
men who need not be ashamed of their work, and then 
the cause need not be ashamed to have them as its rep- 
resentatives. 

This principle being held in view, the doctrine will not 
be responsible for the inefficiency of incompetent per- 
sons, who fail to fulfill or to realize expectations, and who 
thence generate skepticism in others, and perhaps yield 



2l6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

to it themselves. Such persons have simply mistaken 
their calling; and the sooner they seek some other 
vocation the better for them and the cause of Pneuma- 
topathy. Not every good man is competent to be a 
preacher or a theologian, nor every healthy man a phy- 
sician. Every member of the great spiritual body to its 
proper office. 

It has been argued that since Pneumatopathy is a 
science, it should be equally good for all. Principles and 
laws, it is argued, are unchanging, and cover all persons 
and all cases. This is all very true. But all persons do 
not, therefore, have an equal understanding of the prin- 
ciples and laws, and how to use them and apply them in 
all cases. Some have here an insight which is denied to 
others. Some have a power of conviction and such a 
grasp of Pneumapathic truth that they are irresistible 
where others are quite powerless. Discrimination and 
common-sense in the choice of vocation are as necessary 
here as anywhere else. 

It is not disparagement of the sciences of mathe- 
matics that everybody is not competent to be proficient 
in the knowledge and comprehension of them. The 
science of optics is not nullified, because there are blind 
men and persons of defective sight. The sciences 
of geography, of geology and of astronomy are not 
brought into reasonable doubt among educated people, 
because there still are people who cannot comprehend 
the Copernicon system, or "the story of the rocks." 
For the comprehension and due prosecution of the 
sciences, we need common gifts, and special gifts, and 
these systematically cultivated in given directions. Sci- 
ence is one thing. The gift for its effective prosecution 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 21/ 

is another thing. Both are necessary. To this the 
greatest and latest born of all sciences, Pneumatopathy, 
is no exception. However immutable its principles, how- 
ever uniform and inflexibly constant their operations, they 
will, for that very reason, be different in their effect 
relative to different agents. This is the law of all truths 
and forces. Change the connection and the result is 
changed. The sun shining through blue glass is not the 
same in effect as when shining through red glass or 
through colorless glass. The same sun pouring his beams 
through a clear atmosphere or a dense fog produces very 
different effects. So the same eternal truth percolating 
through some minds is as dull and dubious as fog-banks ; 
and shining through other minds, it appears a full-orbed 
bright luminary. 

There are some who think that a certain verbal shibo- 
leth, however uttered or by whom, will have the same 
unfailing effect. Blow your horn and the walls fall 
down, no matter about priest or ark or inspiring God. 
Utter your sesame, and rocky masonry gives way and lets 
you into countless treasures. Rub your larnp, and lo ! 
all the spiritual world come to offer you their free ser- 
vice. It makes no difference whether you be fool or 
knave, you can rub your lamp or count your beads or say 
your Pneumapathic Paternoster and Ave Maria, and that 
is always decisive. This is caricature taken for simple 
truth. This cause demands adapted intelligence, moral 
honesty, earnestness and goodness, and devout religious 
feeling. Those of this character only, can well under- 
stand and apply with the best results, the immutable and 
sublime and holy principles of Pneumatopathy. 



2l8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

MODERN WITCHCRAFT. 

When the power of direct healing as a natural endow- 
ment of the human mind is allowed, as it must be to 
some extent, we are confronted with the counter thought, 
if not fact, — the direct power of the human mind for 
the production of various evils. 

Mental healers should be divided into two classes, 
those who make Deity the exclusive factor, and those who 
attribute the same power in a degree to the human mind. 
The first class even admit the second point, with the 
addition that the human mind may do evil as well as 
good, while God can do only good. 

We have here, then, in claim and theory the nucleus 
of a new and modern form of the ancient doctrine that 
we may affect others for good or ill by mental action. 
The evil action here affirms as possible is what was once 
termed witchcraft, though all witchraft was not of evil 
intent. It rather promises good to those who sought its 
aid. It was for this that Saul sought the witch of Endor, 
and it was for some advantage or other the witches in all 
the ages were resorted to. Though it was perhaps gen- 
erally supposed to be of diabolical origin or from spirits 
out of harmony with God, yet it was not always and 
wholly evil in its purpose and rction. It was here like 
the alleged modern power of mental healing and mental 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 219 

injury, though it was more predominantly in the direc- 
tion of evil. 

Of course the intent of healing power is wholly good, 
and there can be no question that there is a degree of 
this power, which has been at intervals, and irregularly, 
manifested through the ages, and which, if scientifically 
cultivated, may become a more general and tractable 
agency. But there is no faculty of human nature, which 
may not be perverted, and there is no power for good, 
which by perversity, may not become a power for evil. 
If one mind can affect another, and through it the body 
for good to heal, to strenghten, to sooth and cheer, it 
would seem that it can exercise a corresponding power 
for results, which are of an opposite nature, and that it 
does do this, we have in some degree various and multi- 
plying evidence. Nothing is more familiar, than that 
man and animals often make themselves sick and sad, 
and even kill themselves with fear and anxiety and for- 
boding. To talk in a melancholy way to a person of 
susceptible temperament, will have a depressing influ- 
ence. Hence, whether true or not, it accords with the 
law of mental influence ; that, as the story goes, a num- 
ber of persons conspired to meet a person of susceptible 
temperament in succession, and at intervals, with great 
solemnity, and signs of sorrow and sympathy, to tell him 
how ill he seemed, how he was sinking in apparent 
health and vigor, and how if something should not be 
speedily done, he could not live long, and that as a result 
he became seriously ill and died. Occurrences which 
clearly exemplifies the principle in question are frequent. 
Any personal presence is always an influence. The dis- 
position which we are indulging, and the general cast of 



220 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

our thought, though unexpressed, will influence a sym- 
pathetic person who is present with us. Still stronger 
will this effect be, if there is a design of the kind. Now 
then, if there is such a thing as telepathic influence, for 
good or for evil, and if this has any power of develop- 
ment by culture, what have we here, that could not 
easily with a little exaggeration, be construed into the 
witchcraft of bygone days ? 

This is not a mere theory, but it has been erected 
into what has been denominated a science, and reduced 
to practice by some people whom we have well and inti- 
mately known. We have known of them deliberately 
setting to work, mentally, to produce infirmities, disease, 
misfortunes and failures upon others. They have done 
this ostensibly in self-defense, alleging, though without 
proof, that others were practicing the same dark game 
on them, and that by meeting out to them, the measure 
they were meeting to others they would reform them. 
This may seem a page too dark for publication in our 
day, but it is a page of veritable history, and not so pri- 
vate but that it is known to many; and the principle 
of it is admitted by hundreds among a certain 
class who are called by a very sacred and noble 
name, who have their chief head-quarters at Boston, 
under the lead and control of one who claims to be the 
infallibly inspired revealer of a system of truth, of which 
this forms a part. Elsewhere I have given witnesses 
and sworn testimony to this. 

We thus see that modern thought itself, while it 
widens its scope, here and there reveals a cloudy and 
tempestuous region on its horizon, and science still needs 
to keep at work, in order to dispel and disperse the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 221 

ghosts and fiends of a dark imagination and of base and 
superstituous fear, jealously and hate. 

Still there is small cause for general and serious alarm. 
These same would-be witches, who freely charge witch- 
craft, under the name of mesmerism, on others, are 
apparently quite powerless. There is no clear scientific 
evidence that they have ever reduced anybody to a cin- 
der, or "thought arsenic into their stomach" or burned 
them away slowly in a blue light, or whisked them off up 
the chimney and carried them to the moon on a broom- 
stick. But who knows what may come with the progress 
of science in this direction ? 

The law of mental healing is by spirit to spirit and 
thence to the sensible organism. It implies the concur- 
rence of minds. Mental healing is not a forced benefac- 
tion, but in the main it is solicited and co-operative. 
There are cases which seem an exception to this, but it 
is only seeming ; and did space allow, these could be well 
explained. 

If the human mind is able to pervert any of its powers, 
it can pervert its power over other minds, and thence over 
their organism. If it can wish them good, it can wish 
them evil. A mesmerist can generate painful as well as 
pleasant sensations. But the mesmerist can have little or 
no power over those who firmly oppose his purpose and 
influence. So it is with any effort at mental evil, as well 
as good. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 
Modern witchcraft is powerless where fear and supersti- 
tion have no power leading to the surrender of the soul 
to known or supposed evil wishes and intentions, and to 
that extent all such evil is self-generated. If we neither 
know nor believe in such intentions they cannot have the 






222 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

slightest influence on us, so far as I have been able to 
ascertain. 

Here we have the law of Treatment at a distance. 
As a rule, I think it will be ineffective where there is no 
knowledge of it, and therefore, concurrence with it. To 
some extent, therefore, the cause as well as the effect is 
subjective. But it is not entirely so. There is a con- 
current and co-operative mental action. It is now con- 
ceded that there is such a thing as telepathy. One mind 
reaches the other, and as it would not do but for their 
having put themselves by agreement in spiritual connec- 
tion with each other, so that each acts with the force of 
both, plus the principles on which they both act. 

Telepathic action for good is thus possible and scien- 
tifically verifiable. But telepathic influence for evil is 
not thus possible, because no one will concur like that in 
deliberately co-operating for his own injury. Thus we 
see how this modern "Voodooing" is divested of its 
power and danger and terrors ; while the principle of 
telepathic influence is vindicated. Its power for good is 
great, while its power for evil is very small, and virtually 
nill. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 223 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DIVINE AGENCY IN HEALING. 

All healing is a generation or restoration of the con- 
cordant and effective action of all the members in the 
discharge of their functions. It is, therefore, always a 
procedure which conforms the action of all the mem- 
bers with the law of their complex relations to each 
other. Now, as we have seen, there are different classes 
and grades of laws, and there may, therefore, be con- 
formity with the lower grades when there is discord with 
the higher. In this case, there will be health in the 
lower life when disease and error obtain in the higher 
form — bodily health with mental disease. Or the in- 
tellect may be clear and sound in reference to things of 
sense, while in reference to high and pure moral ques- 
tions, it may be dull and stupid and very perverse and 
awry. 

Now the true, the perfect and eternal health must in- 
clude the whole man. It must consist in a perfect bal- 
ance of all faculties and powers, upper and inferior, and 
the action and expression of one spirit and life. Then 
the superior will rule all below it and express itself in 
and through the lower. 

Hence, the true and perfect and permanent healing 
must be religious, divine in its ultimate reference and 



224 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

dominant quality. The healer allies and unites himself 
in faith, character and purpose with God. He reverently 
and humbly, yet surely, seeks the divine interposition 
and help. He does not expect God to resort to any 
manifest independent action. But as he, the healer, con- 
forms to the spiritual law of divine requirement, he be- 
comes the fit living channel of divine agency, which 
otherwise would be impossible. He touches with the 
key of spiritual life the electric chord of the divine anergy 
and conducts that energy from God to his needy fellow 
man. If then the invalid is concurrent with him, he is 
benefited from the crown to the sole of his being ; and 
so far as it extends, the benefit is abiding, for it is the 
communication of eternal life. 

On the other hand, if the patient and the healer are 
concerned only for the flesh, for the advantages of this 
lower world of sense, then there is only the healing 
action of mortal thought, all on this plane alone. The 
healing effects may last while 'this form of life lasts, but 
it cannot last longer, because it does not reach higher to 
the spiritual and abiding super-sensible life, and it may 
have been made the occasion of injuring the higher life. 
Nay, it must have operated to this result, because ignor- 
ing the better life is injurious to it, and is condemnatory 
and degrading. 

Therefore, a healing which is not under the control of 
a truly devout and pure and spiritual disposition and 
intent, is only of a temporary and superficial advantage 
at the best, and may turn out ultimately to be none at 
all, but an injury. 

Here is the philosophy and law of a true Pneumato- 
pathy. The highest and best of powers should suffuse 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 225 

and animate all the rest. The patient and physician 
should understand this, and should theoretically and 
practically concur in it. This is the soul and proper sig- 
nificance and end of our great movement of Pneumato- 
pathy. To impress this, to promote this, and to teach 
this, with all the thought and knowledge subservient to 
it, is the work of Pneumatopathy. It is equally holy 
and philosophical. With reverence and hope let us 
enter here, and with diligence and prayer pursue our 
task. 

God's agency is wholly and only good, now and for- 
ever. As related to his action and purpose, all apparent 
evil is only an unpleasant and temporary form of good. 
He doeth all things well. So must it be with us so far 
as we are one with him. We seek the removal of all 
evil, as pain and disability, and will do it as far as we 
can. God seeks the same end, but he seeks spiritual 
good more than the sensible, and he, therefore, may per- 
mit the creature's self-made evil until it can be removed 
according to law, and according to highest law, which 
includes all lower laws as their regulator and end. 

The doctrine here set forth every one will see is in 
accord with the teachings of the Bible. The only differ- 
ence is that the Bible enjoins conformity with the law of 
faith as a condition of success, while we here expound 
the law of faith as spiritual intuition or intelligence. 

i. Sickness is not natural. God made all things " very good." 

2. He made the universe, not as a laboratory of medicine, but as 
the home of an innocent and healthy race. 

3. Sickness is declared in Deut. xxviii. to be the " curse " of the 
law. In Galatians Christ is declared to have redeemed us from the 
curse of the law. This must include sickness. 

4. In Ex. xv. 26, : God tells his people that if they will walk obedi- 



226 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

ently in his ways, he will keep them from the diseases of Egypt, and 
announces himself as their constant Healer. 

5. In Num. xx., 8: He heals them when bitten by fiery serpents 
through a look upon the type of Jesus a brazen serpent. 

6. In the thirty-third chapter of Job and in the history of Job 
himself, we find sickness coming through the power of Satan, as 
God's second voice, to recal men from his error, and taken away 
when he learns his lessons. 

7. In Psalm ciii. 2 : David praises God for healing just as he does 
for forgiveness and salvation. 

8. In Psalm xci : God promises protection for our bodies as well 
as our souls, if we abide in him. 

9. In 1 Chron. xvi : Asa dies in his sickness, because he seeks 
not unto the Lord, but to the physicians. 

10. In Isa. xxxviii : Hezekiah lives, because he seeks not unto 
the physicians, but the Lord, forgetful of God. 

11. In Isa. liii., 4: The removal of our diseases is included in 
Christ's atonement along with our sins. 

12. In Matthew viii., 17, Christ fulfils these words, " healing all 
that were sick." 

13. In Luke xiii., 16: He declared that the infirm woman was 
bound by Satan and ought to be loosed. 

14. In Luke x. the ministry of healing is given to the seventy, 
who represent the future workers of the church. 

15. In Mark xvii, 18, it is given to " all them that believe these 
things." 

16. In James v, 14, it is committed to the Elders of the church. 

17. In 1 Cor. xii, it is bestowed upon the whole church as one of 
its ministries and gifts, until Jesus comes. 

18. In Rom. viii., 11, it is declared to be the Spirit's work to 
quicken our mortal bodies now in this life. 

19. In 2 Cor. iv., 8, we are promised the life of Jesus in our 
mortal flesh. 

20. In 1 Cor. 6 : Our bodies are called members of Christ, and 
the body is said to be for the Lord and the Lord for the body. 

We have seen how the human mind can operate on 
others in the production of health or disease only through 
the concurrence of other minds ; and as they will not con- 
cur to their own known disadvantage, there is here little 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 227 

danger, except to a few of weak and superstitious nature. 
On the other hand, those who are true and godly Pneu- 
matopathists, can never attempt or wish ought but good, 
and only good can come from their mental action. This, 
of course, all will see at once, because the Good cannot 
seek and perpetuate evil. 

Here another principle comes in to modify and enlarge 
our view and action concerning the healing of those who 
are at a distance and unaware of our treatment of them. 
Our action being a co-operation with God, it is not limi- 
ted in its effect and influence, like the unaided action of 
the mere human mind. In God and through God we 
may affect the unknowing and unknown, the involuntary 
as well as the voluntary. We may change their minds 
from error to truth, lead them to receive the truth and 
iavor the action of Pneumatopathy. We can thus move 
them to good. This is the way religion has always 
spoken, and it has ascribed this power to believing prayer 
in accordance with the mind of God. This Godly Pneu- 
mathic treatment is of the essence of prayer. It is 
prayer comprehending itself, breathing at once the 
atmosphere of faith and science, supported by the two 
pillars of intelligence and trust ; and these blend into 
one as an intelligent trust or a trustful intelligence. Its 
only element is goodness, its only witchery is divine and 
holy love, its only arrows and spells are truth, faith and 
prayer. 

There has been an effort made to separate Pneumato- 
pathy from religion. That were to separate a thing from 
its very soul and life. It is the unreligious healing 
which we would repress to the utmost. That healing is 
not all that it ought to be, either for the healer or the 



228 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

healed. "They heal the hurt of the daughter of my 
people slightly, saith the Lord." If it is meant only to 
say, that Pneumatopathists need not set up a separate 
Church, there is no harm in that opinion and it is not 
unreasonable. People of all churches may be Pneuma- 
topathists if the churches will leave them in peace, as 
they sometimes will. 

There is nothing very peculiar in the religion of Pneu- 
matopathy, or in its theology. It claims simply to be the 
New Testament theology and religion scientifically ex- 
pounded. It attempts to give a philosophy of the mira- 
cles of the Bible, and lift them out of the fog-sphere of 
marvel and mystery, and plant them on solid earth. We 
accept the wonders, and show them not so wonderful as 
to be incredible or inconsistent with science and philos- 
ophy ; and in all this there is nothing to separate Chris- 
tians from each other, but much to unite them, and no 
obvious reason for setting up a special and new denomi- 
nation. 

But we are painfully aware that Pneumatopathists of 
much activity and influence are not always untrammeled 
in their old Church connections. They are sometimes 
shunned, occasionally affronted, almost insulted, so that 
the pleasures of fraternity and of home-feeling are 
seriously marred. Besides, their views are covertly or 
openly assailed or misrepresented, perhaps unconsciously 
from the pulpit, and they have no adequate advocate and 
defence. They, therefore, need a pulpit or platform 
where their doctrine shall find a just expression and a 
worthy vindication against its enemies. This will grad- 
ually enlighten the regular Church and pulpit, and render 
a spiritual and intellectual affiliation possible. In the 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 229 

meanwhile, we should not advise any Pneumatopathists 
to leave their own connection. The new Church should 
not exclude the old. It should be such that they can 
belong to it while still members of the old Chureh — 
unless the latter exclude them on that account, which 
would be a rare occurrence. 



23O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

SUPER-SENSIBLE MALADIES. 

The treatment of mental maladies is peculiar and 
manifestly appropriate to Pneumatopathy. The mala- 
dies which are so designated are indeed no more mental 
than other maladies ; but they are supersensible, and 
this characteristic has secured them the exclusive name 
of mental on the old theory of dualism. 

Some of these maladies have a sensible origin. They 
may result from some injury to the brain, which is quite 
frequent. 

Surgical skill may at first be here of service ; but its 
service soon comes to an end. The exercise of skill in 
surgery, as any where else, is the action of mind. It is, 
therefore, not necessarily out of place in Pneumatopathy, 
and may be appropriated as one of its branches. A 
proper regulation of sensible conditions and surround- 
ings is the next step, under the direction and inspiration 
of Pneumapathic wisdom. Finally, when the patient is 
prepared for it, the direct and declared action of mind 
upon his mind must be put into operation. This will 
make his own mental action healthy, and stimulate it into 
vigorous action. This will in turn operate on the brain, 
and gradually restore it to its normal form and healthy 
action, which again will react on the mind. 

Most of these super-sensible maladies originate in un- 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 23 I 

due mental excitement, and in fear and care and various 
anxieties. These affect the brain and the whole nervous 
tissue, and thence the condition of the entire organism. 
The materialism of our times leads people in this condi- 
tion to resort to drugs. It is said "they need to be 
toned up," and for this purpose nostrums of all kinds 
and in endless quantities are prescribed or procured. 
Every house is extensively a depository of drugs and drug 
bottles. Quack medicines are sold by the cart-load, and 
they are the most conspicuous and familiar of all classes 
of advertisements. The starving need to be " toned up" 
with food. But no one was ever "toned up " with drugs, 
especially people of this class. Only the healing virtue 
of a powerful, healthy, mental action can be of any ser- 
vice to them. 

To thoughtful men this is becoming well known, and 
more than they are aware they act on the principle we 
inculcate. Our asylums for the insane practically ac- 
knowledge it in no small degree. Their chief treatment 
is mental, as it must be. But they do not proceed about 
it formally and scientifically. This makes them im- 
mensely less efficient than they ought to be. They also 
to a large extent, reverse the proper order of aims and 
influences. They seek to operate on the mind through 
the senses, and ignore the mightier agency of operating 
directly by mind on both mind and body. They work at 
the effect instead of the cause of the malady. 

Some bodily diseases very manifestly imjure the mind 
and some do not. On the other hand, some mental dis- 
eases seriously injure the body and some do not. Melan- 
cholia usually injures or diminishes vitality ; but a happy 
or stimulating lunacy, or even mania, sometimes or fre- 






232 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

quently intensifies and heightens physical vigor, and this 
class of mental invalids often retain their health and 
bodily energy to advanced old age, and wear out most of 
their early keepers and guardians. 

For the most effective action in this sphere of Pneu- 
matopathy we need what Pneumatopathy imparts and 
fosters, a clear intuition of spiritual life and law, and a 
practical assurance which grows out of this. This will 
beget a courage which will not falter in emergencies, 
and an equinimity which is not easily disturbed by cir- 
cumstances which are either appalling or provoking. 
These are the conditions always of the most powerful 
healing agency ; as they are every way the foster-parent 
of all excellence. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 233 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE OF PNEUMATOPATHY. 

We are now prepared for the question of the principle 
by which the healing is affected. Several answers have 
been given, all of which are inadequate, and they become 
misleading when put forth, as they are, as the scientific 
exposition of the subject. 

One of these supposed explanations, and the most 
popular, is that as our own thought affects the body, we 
cure ourselves and others by generating the conviction 
of being well. The conviction and cure will often coin- 
cide, perhaps always ; but they are not related to each 
other as cause and effect, except in an uncertain and 
partial degree. Many believe they are well when they 
are dying. Many believe they are sick and hurt where 
they are not. Many try to believe they are well and find 
it impossible. Faith . has its function here, but it is 
not the exclusive and all-potent factor in the work of 
mental healing; and what its office is, we shall see as we 
proceed. 

Another explanation, is "the understanding of Truth." 
But this is perhaps, more lame and inadequate than the 
other. If we apply this to God, we see its utter improb- 
ability and irrelevancy. God's understanding is always 
infinitely perfect. It never, in that respect, undergoes 



234 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

any changes. If God is the supremely potent factor, 
and that because of a perfect understanding of Truth, 
then all must be healed at once and forever. Nay, there 
could never be any call for healing, for the infinite under- 
standing of God must preclude all evil or belief of evil, 
which is itself an evil, especially if false. 

If we apply this doctrine to man, its fallacy is also 
strikingly manifest. For one to understand any truth 
does not necessarily affect for either good or evil those 
who know neither the truth nor the person who does 
understand. Timbucto is not affected by our solitary 
and undisclosed thinking in Boston, however good that 
thinking and understanding may be, nor whatever truth 
it comprehends. 

Further, if the great truth which, if understood, is 
said to be effective and beneficent, is that "man being the 
eternal and perfect idea and likeness and reflection of 
God, there is no eviV , then I need not utter it. My 
understanding is itself sufficient, as the dogma declares. 
It is, therefore, quite enough for me to sit still at home, 
or go about other business. I understand the great truth 
all the same, having once learned it, whatever I am do- 
ing and wherever I am. Place and circumstances and 
occupation do not destroy my understanding of the truth. 
Hence, no change is ever required of these conditions in 
order to the fullest action of healing power anywhere. 

But this does not accord with facts, nor with the prac- 
tice of those who advocate very dogmatically this dogma. 
They go about to visit their patients, or have their 
patients visit them. Then they repeat, audibly or inaud- 
ibly, what they understand. They thus go through a 
special mental exercise ; and it is this exercise on which 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 235 

they depend for healing. This produces an effect on the 
mind of the patient, and sets that at work, and thence 
the body in a health-generating way. These people 
sometimes do heal, but their theory does not explain 
adequately their own operation and its results and limi- 
tations. They are right only in the general principle 
that mind heals ; but utterly wrong in their theoretic 
exposition of the intellectual modus operandi. 

Again, if the understanding of this great dogma, that 
there is no evil, is of itself the great and exclusive heal- 
ing agency, then we need not know of any particular 
case of evil in order to remove it. Our understanding 
will remove that without any sensible knowledge and 
action, which are according to the theory in question 
pronounced to be nothing and powerless. We need not 
to be informed of the sickness of A, B and C in order 
to heal them. We understand the great truth just as 
well before, as after we know them and their " belief." 
We may say the same of all men and their ailments ; and 
on this principle we ought to cure them all without 
knowing them. If our understanding of the truth alone 
is the healing power, then they would all be healed the 
instant I or any one attained this understanding. But 
as all maladies are not annihilated, we must conclude, 
either that this doctrine is erroneous, or that no one, not 
even the advocates of the dogma, nor even God himself, 
has this understanding, so that if the doctrine were true, 
it is worthless. 

Understanding of truth is necessary, and faith in in- 
finite Goodness is necessary. But these are not enough. 
They must be applied and used, and thus made effective. 
We must understand the truth and believe that we can 



236 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

avail ourselves of it, by putting ourselves in proper rela- 
tions with it, and with God and our needy fellow-creatures ; 
and then we must do this. When all this is done, and 
not before, the divine benefaction comes, and God is 
present to heal. 

There is, therefore, for the highest benefit, something 
to be done by the patient as well as the physician. He 
must draw nigh to God that God may draw nigh to him, 
and he must co-operate with the human agent in the 
work in the process of divine healing. There is a union 
of intelligent thought and of devout trusting hearts and 
of active purpose. 

Suffering is not fundamental and ultimate in the econ- 
omy of God. It is allowed, not as an end, but a means 
and accident, and so the divine goodness has ordained 
by law to end it when our subjective connections and 
condition render it possible and proper. 

Into the full exposition of this we cannot enter. We 
can only give this indication. Indeed, it is difficult, if 
not impossible to give it adequate expression in the 
written word. The element is too fine and subtle to be 
caught and transfixed in the sensible stereotypes. The 
subtler forces of personal presence and its influences 
and expressions are necessary for the adequate commu- 
nication, or rather, generation of the conception, and 
the realization of the Power and its procedure. 

Growing out of our previous expositions there are 
certain formula which will occur to the thoughtful stu- 
dent that might with advantage be often used in treating 
the sick. It is not necessary or best to put them in 
print. They are best reserved from the inconsiderate 
and unenlightened ; and communicated only by the living 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 237 

spirit, just as the most sacred feelings find utterance 
only in solitude or in the ear of most intimate friends. 
He who is filled with the Spirit of Pneumatopathy will 
divine the process and will readily comprehend and 
assimilate what is thus uttered in his prepared ear. 



238 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

SYNOPSIS OF PNEUMATOPATHY. 

PARTS FIRST AND SECOND. 

How many Grand Divisions are there in Pneumato- 
pathy ? 

Six. 

What are the First and Second Divisions ? 

They are the Relation of Pneumatopathy to God and 
historic evolution. 

How is it related to God ? 

First, in that all mental action naturally leads up to 
God. All thought of good suggests God as its source 
and perfect subject. All thought of evil suggests God 
as its destroyer. The student will here enlarge and give 
examples, and show how all mental healing thus depends 
on the action of the Infinite, directly or indirectly. 

How else is Pneumatopathy related to God ? 

In that the agency of mental healing is involved in the 
very conception of God as the Infinitely Perfect Mind. 

How does that involve Pneumatopathy ? 

Because the mind of Infinite Goodness must do good 
and only good ; and that must be divine mental healing 
for the sick under proper conditions ; and it will also 
naturally make the created mind a channel of its healing 
agency. 

How else is Pneumatopathy connected with the 
thought of God? 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 239 

Because God must be conceived as making his crea- 
tures in this respect like himself. As they are finite 
minds, this gift must be conceived as a part of their en- 
dowment. 

How is this further seen ? 

In history, since history as a whole is a progress in 
mentality, an advance toward and in spiritual conception, 
so that the conception that all is mind, and that so mind 
is the only power, is the latest and highest evolution of 
thought. 

Let the student enlarge on this and give the steps of 
the historic progression. 

PART THIRD. 

What is the Third Great Division of Pneumatopathy ? 

Its relation to Law as an essential characteristic of all 
things. 

What has that to do with Pneumatopathy ? 

It suggests that there are Laws of mental healing, 
that, therefore, there is a Science of mental healing, 
which science is rightly designated by the term Pneuma- 
topathy. 

What is the source of Law ? 

The nature of things. Their action is from their 
nature, and therefore, so long as their nature is the same, 
their action will be the same in the same conditions. 
So long as stones are stones, as stones they will act. So 
of everything else. Thus law is a necessity from the 
nature of things. (Let the student elucidate this by 
further examples.) 

What connection has this with Pneumatopathy ? 

It shows the fundamental character of Pneumatopathy 



24O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

— that it is not artificial and superficial, that it is inher- 
ent in the nature of all reality, in the nature of the 
divine mind, and thence in some degree in the human 
mind, which improves in this power by connection with 
the divine ; and that the healing power is not accidental 
and arbitrary, but follows necessary laws, which we are 
to observe. 

There are laws of the divine activity. God must act 
from and in accordance with his eternal nature, which 
gives the perfect laws of his action and of his require- 
ments ; and these are perfect, because the divine nature 
is perfect, and they all, therefore, operate for the highest 
good in their ultimate issue. 

Hence, there are laws of finite and human activity 
and responsibility. 

What two great classes of laws are there ? 

The class of Executive laws, and the class of Injunc- 
tive laws. Let the student define these and illustrate 
them by examples, and show how one generates tempo- 
rary evil as well as good, and how the other enjoins only 
good, and then show how to turn the temporary evil into 
eternal good. 

Hence, there is a law of duty in regard to healing, 
enjoining the use and development of the power in re- 
sisting and conquering certain forms of evil which are 
designed to be temporary, and which may endure longer 
or shorter, according as man developes and uses well 
this great power. 

What is the Third Part of Pneumatopathy ? 

Part Third is Pneumatopathy in relation to Good and 
Evil. 

What are good and evil ? 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 24I 

They are the harmony and discord of experience and 
mental action. Here let the student enlarge and illus- 
trate by instances. 

Why do you say harmony of experiences and mental 
action, instead of saying harmony of things ? 

Because we know things only by experience, and as 
experiences or mental actions and states, and because it 
is only the harmony of subjective states that is of any 
importance. 

What is the value and interest of anything except for 
its bearing on character and happiness ? 

Here let the student illustrate at length. 

What relation does this sustain to Pneumatopathy ? 

A close and vital relation, because Pneumatopathy 
expounds and exemplifies the laws of harmony in our 
organic, as well as super-sensible conditions or experien- 
ces. It is the bestowment of health, wholeness, sanity, 
perfection, and an exposition of the principles by which 
this is achieved. 

What is the origin of Good ? 

It has no origin. It is eternal and infinite in the being: 
and attributes of God. 

How does this bear on Pneumatopathy ? 

Pneumatopathy is like religion, and is a religion, in 
that it is the science of goodness, of the laws of diffus- 
ing good and destroying evil. It is, therefore, the ex- 
pression of eternal and immutable principle. It is vitally 
rooted in the eternal substance of Being. It is the 
supreme law of existence to do good and to remove and 
destroy to the utmost every form and degree of evil. 
This is the source of Pneumatopathic healing power, 
and the warrant for all honest effort in this direction. 



242 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

No one who wields any such power needs any human 
certificate of right, though certificates are often a safe- 
guard against quacks and pretenders and dishonest per- 
sons, and unreliable or unsound characters. 

Is there any evil ? 

That meets us everywhere, and to deny it were a satire 
on the sanity of the speaker. Evil is conscious discord, 
and of that we are all too well aware, else we should not 
here be out of harmony with the assertions of any other 
person or party. The denial of the existence of evil is 
inconsistent with every theory of healing, physical and 
mental, because in that case there is no healing, and no 
room for a meaning in any theory of healing. 

How is the existence of evil consistent with the exist- 
ence of infinite goodness ? 

If goodness is infinite, where is the possibility of evil ? 

Infinity is not an aggregated quantity, and therefore, it 
is not made up of all the separate objects of the universe. 
Such an infinite would be only the indefinite, because 
however vast and multitudinous we conceive this uni- 
verse and its objects, we shall always be able to say 
that these might be greater ; and, however high in the 
scale of excellence it may be, we should still be able to 
say, it might and possibly will be or may be more excel- 
lent ; for we conceive that it exists and is operated under 
the law of everlasting progress. Therefore, the term in- 
finite good does not apply to the finite phenomena of 
the universe. These are not God, who alone is infinitely 
good ; and these objects may, therefore, be variously im- 
perfect and involve degrees and forms of incidental and 
temporary evil. This we know to be a fact, explain it as 
we may, or leave it unexplained. 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 243 

How is it possible for Infinite goodness to permit the 
existence of evil ? 

Because he cannot help it. 

Does not that imply that God is limited, as John 
Stuart Mill argues, either in his power or his wisdom or 
his goodness ? 

No, because it is not the prerogative of the Infinite to 
prevent all evil, but only such evil as cannot in any wise 
be effectively connected with or conducive to a higher 
good than were otherwise possible. 

Why does not the Infinite attain the higher good with- 
out the evil ? 

Would not that be far better ? 

That were impossible even for the Infinite. 

Is anything too hard for God, and will you limit the 
Holy One of Israel ? 

As evil is known to exist, it is more honorable to God 
to relieve him of all responsibility for it, than to say, he 
could have prevented it, and would not. 

There are some things manifestly too hard for God, 
and to say this is not to limit him, because infinity has 
its logical limitations. Infinity cannot be finite. Eternal 
Truth cannot lie, and Infinite Intelligence cannot err or 
contradict itself. Nor can Infinite Power do anything 
which involves a self-contradiction. It cannot make 
valleys without hills, or a short line without ends. It 
cannot endow the finite without the prerogatives of 
infinity, or exempt it from the conditions necessarily 
inherent to finity or the special forms and limits thereof. 
It cannot confer the fixity of unvolitional necessity on 
freedom, nor moral responsibility on the unconscious or 
the unvolitional and necessitated. 



244 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

What classes of evil are there ? 

There are two classes, the moral and the non-moral. 

What is the non-moral ? 

It is that which comes inevitably from the action of 
natural law. 

Here examples are to be given. 

What is moral evil ? 

That is sin. — It is the wilful perversion of free moral 
agency. It is doing evil when we should do good, or 
failing to do a required good, which it was in our power 
to do. There is such evil, and this is incomparably the 
most dreadful of all evil. 

Can natural evil be turned to good ? 

Yes, in various ways, so that ultimately moral good 
will bring all things into harmony with itself ; and this 
is the law and end of finite existence. 

Here give illustrations of this principle, and show its 
partial working. 

What has Pneumatopathy to do with this ? 

Pneumatopathy is a moral agent using natural law for 
its moral intent, to bring all into everlasting harmony. It 
is thus the expression of the divine mind and the highest 
form of created agency. 

Natural good and evil through the uniform action of 
natural forces, is a necessary guide to man's growing in- 
telligence, and also a proof and test of individual charac- 
ter; and it furnishes a field for the developement of 
character, intellectual and moral. 

Let the student unfold this at length. 

Has God any knowledge of evil ? 

Yes, because he knows all things, all thoughts, all ex- 
periences, whether sensible or super-sensible, which 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 245 

include evil as well as good. We know evil, much more 
he, though he cannot know it by experience as we know it. 

Here go with the student over the Biblical and psy- 
chological proofs on the subject. 

If God is omnipresent and is wholly good, where is 
there room for evil ? 

God and goodness do not fill space. That is only 
filled by sensible phenomena, which are no part of 
God, and which are both good and evil. Then there are 
evil thoughts and feelings which are super-sensible, and 
which, therefore, do not occupy space. 

Does God's knowledge of evil endorse it ? 

No more than our knowledge of it endorses it, and no 
more than Christ's denunciation of known hypocrisy 
endorsed it. God knows it, to disapprove and to destroy 
it as rapidly as possible, and in the proper way, which 
way he also knows perfectly ; and this way Pneumato- 
pathy endeavors to expound and exemplify. 

PART FOURTH. 

What is comprised in Part Fourth ? 

An exposition of the relation of Pneumatopathy to 
mind and matter. 

What three great theories of the universe are made 
the theoretic basis of mental healing ? 

The materialistic, which affirms that all is matter ; the 
dualistic, which affirms two kinds of substances entirely 
unlike each other, and the idealistic or spiritual, which 
affirms that all is spirit, that what is called matter and 
its phenomena, are only the ideas of spirit or mental 
phenomena. 



246 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

What is the historic order of their development ? 

First, the material theory, then the dualistic, and 
lastly, the spiritual. This indicates the permanence of 
the last. With this, Pneumatopathy began its course, 
and still holds to it for the most part, and the other two 
theories have tried with ill success to graft it on to them- 
selves. 

What is the evidence that all is mind ? 

The evidence of consciousness, which never gets be- 
yond itself, so that all we immediately know are modes 
of self, and hence we should affirm no more, and are 
soon found contradicting ourselves if we do. 

Give examples. 

Is there any other class of evidence ? 

Yes, the Bible, which says God is a spirit, and that we 
are made in his likeness. 

What is the advantage of this doctrine in relation to 
Pneumatopathy ? 

Its simplicity simplifies Pneumatopathy. It avoids the 
conflict of laws between matter and spirit. As matter 
is conceived as wholly opposite to spirit, all its laws have 
to be opposed in mental healing, which makes the work 
unnatural, and augments it to a degree that renders it 
incredible ; and all the great works of the Bible are dis- 
credited. If all is mind, then all its action is on itself, a 
modification of itself in accordance with its own highest 
law, so that it violates no law, suspends no law, but ful- 
fills all law. 

Are we then to ignore or to contradict the senses ? 

We are to do neither, but observe and rightly interpret 
and utilize them for higher ends. 

What is the function of the senses ? 



CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 247 

To symbolize, test and educate the super-sensible 
faculties. 
What is 

PART FIFTH? 

The relation of Pneumatopathy to other sciences, such 
as Surgery, Physiology, Therapeutics, Hygeine and Psy- 
chology. It assigns to each their proper place and pre- 
sides over and utilizes them all. 

These sciences are all spiritual, because all is spirit, 
and in their proper conception they are branches of 
Pneumatopathy, which is the head of all. 

What is Psychology ? 

The doctrine of soul. It is the term which designates 
the science which expounds the laws of mind as mind, 
finite or infinite. 

Is there more than one mind ? 

Yes, there is the Infinite Mind, and there is a vast 
indefinite number of finite minds. These are not modes 
or parts or variations of the Infinite Mind, but distinct 
individualities, the creatures of the one Infinite. 

Has the human mind any intrinsic healing power as a 
natural endowment ? 

Yes, this is one of its faculties ; and men differ in 
degree here, as they do in other endowments, and it 
should be cultivated. 

Can bad men heal ? 

Sometimes and in some degree, which needs to be 
elucidated. 

Can they do harm by mental action ? 

Some, but not much. The law of mental influence 
does not favor maltreatment so much as it favors good. 

What is that law ? 



248 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 

It is a law of voluntary co-operation. We can do little 
good, usually, by mental action, where the patient does 
not co-operate, but resists ; and as they will resist known 
evil action, they are generally quite safe from its power. 

Was the healing power of " Christ Jesus" purely 
human and natural endowment ? 

No. It was immensely exalted by divine influence, 
which was bestowed in response to the spiritual needs 
and capabilities of Jesus. This is the proper condition 
of healing. The highest healing is thus the divine 
agency through the human, the divine suffusing, inform- 
ing and empowering the human. This is Pneumatopathy 
in its highest form ; and this is to be attained only by 
earnest spiritual culture. 



INSTITUTE OF PNEUMATOPATH, 

[MENTAL HEALING] 

54 MONTGOMERY ST., BOSTON, MASS., 

AND ASBUEY PARK, N. J. 



Patients, both absent and present, receive faithful and ef- 
fective treatment at moderate prices. 

After long and profound study, Dr. Wm. I. Gill has con- 
structed the doctrine of Mental Healing into a coherent 
system of philosophy, which is sure to command universal 
confidence, and satisfy all rational and spiritual needs, and 
disclose the laws of all health of both body and mind. 

TERMS MODERATE. 



PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM, 



A metaphysical work of profound and subtle character, for 
advanced minds, in opposition to materialism and dualism. 

This profound work serves as a philosophical foundation 
for a true Christain Science. 

Address the author, 

WILLIAM I. GILL, 
54 Montgomery Street, Boston, Mass., or at Asbury Park, N. J. 

In paper, 85 ce?its ; cloth, $1.50 ; postage paid. 



■\ 



